


Martinsson: Black Dahlia

by sweetoceancloud



Category: Tom Hiddleston - Fandom, Wallander (UK TV), Wallander - All Media Types, Wallander Series - Henning Mankell
Genre: F/M, Gen, hiddles - Freeform, tom hiddleston - Freeform, wallander - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-28
Updated: 2013-05-28
Packaged: 2017-12-13 05:15:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 12
Words: 53,690
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/820408
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sweetoceancloud/pseuds/sweetoceancloud
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Based upon the Wallander television series.  Magnus Martinsson, Ystad police detective, is called to investigate the murder of a prominent Stockholm businessman. While murder seems an every day thing in Martinsson’s life, the difference here is that the prime suspect is his lover, Lova Sahlberg.  Even Martinsson can’t be sure of her innocence until he puts the pieces together - but working the puzzle itself may be deadly.  Includes an untitled one-shot as Chapter 11 and another one shot called "Restraint" as Chapter 12.   Both NC17 with applicable warnings.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Part One

It wasn’t the first time I’d fucked Lova Sahlberg; yet I feared it would be the last.

***

It was a strange sensation, this lucid dreaming. I’d done it frequently, prone upon my bed, living in my brain, living in a dream -- yet able to control everything that happened. That night, I’d been dreaming of Linda Wallander. Dreaming of, no… remembering… remembering as I held my gun, aimed at her would-be killer, taking the shot.

Yet, instead of the shot hitting the mark, it went wild, twisting and turning in the air, flying at speed yet in slow motion in curlicues and wobbles and strange waves. I’d lost my tenuous control of the nightmare, lost all control of the bullet, and it hit. 

It hit straight between Linda Wallander’s blue, blue eyes.

Eyes which rolled back, the blue disappearing into white as the bullet passed through her head, moving slowly, slowly, slowly. The bullet, my bullet, gored through flesh, muscle and bone. I could see inside of her then, watching the bullet rape her brain tissue this way and that, and sever her corpus callosum; only to come through brain again, and then again bone, muscle, then flesh and finally, blonde hair. 

I screamed; but my throat produced no sound. 

I fired another shot, the sound echoing strangely double around me; in stereo, as if in my mind and in my room at the same time. A light, a single strobe, pulsed, and I woke; yanked from sleep and quick out of bed -- panting and sweating, affected by both the nightmare and the lightning that had flashed through my window.

“Fuck.” I slapped a hand to my forehead, producing a slight pain as the heel of it hit brow bone. Good. I let that hand melt down my face, pulling my flesh taut with it, rousing me into wakefulness. 

The good news was it was a dream. 

The bad news is it had really happened, but not quite that way. In reality, I’d missed Linda Wallander. She was never my target. Rather, I’d killed the man who held her, the man who, in his turn, pointed a gun at the back of her head. 

I’d killed a man; essentially committed murder, and yet, Linda’s father, my colleague, Detective Kurt Wallander, had never thanked me for saving his daughter’s life. 

The arsehole.

Maybe that’s why I’d dreamed of it as often as I did, even that night, after all that had happened that day. Maybe, secretly, part of me had really, really wanted to kill Linda Wallander. 

Or Kurt.

I didn’t know.

***

Fully awake, I checked my bedside clock. 1:29 A.M. One thirty in the fucking morning. I didn’t expect Lova to be beside me. I’d hoped she would be, but I knew she’d leave me sometime in the night. Which she had. She always did, and it had nothing to do with me or her feelings for me, whatever they may have been. We simply didn’t talk of those things. Well, she didn’t. I’d wanted to, frequently. 

Damn me for a fool. 

I could say with certainty the exact time she’d left. 23:15. It took fifteen minutes to get from my flat to our station in Central Ystad, by car; and she’d brought her car that morning. She’d parked it a block away from my flat. Heaven forbid if anyone had seen her car outside my flat. 

Lova was on duty for the midnight shift. I’d taken that shift the week before, and it was murder. Literally. Many times over, unfortunately.

“Lova, you shouldn’t go in tonight,” I’d said earlier, tracing my hand along the fleshy curve of her bare side, gripping her gently where torso met bottom, “you’re not in any condition to….,”

“Fuck that,” she’d retorted, twisting away from my touch, pulling the sheet up over her waist. “I’m fine. I’ll be fine, and I’ll do my job just fine so stop…,” I’d reached for her shoulder, and she again shrugged away from me. Her body tensed, her bare flesh becoming stiff, taut, unmovable, seeming to turn to stone before my eyes. “Stop babying me!” She hissed. “Jesus, just leave me the fuck alone.”

“Okay! Fine, Lova!” I sat up in the bed, my hands held up defensively. I let her have a minute, and she took it, her harsh breathing slowly settling, the rise and fall of her shoulder and her back slowing. “Listen,” I said, leaning over and brushing my lips against the small, short hairs at the back of her neck, “You’ve been through shit today, let me take your shift, or let me call Anne-Brit, she’ll cover for you. You shouldn’t go on tonight.”

“Why?” 

I planted a small kiss behind her ear. “Well, like I said, you’ve been through the shit. I know how much it meant to you, the trial.”

“Yeah,” she shifted, moving further away, out of the reach of my caresses, “it’s over now, isn’t it?” Her voice quavered, just at the edge of tears, and it cut me to the core to hear it.

I grasped her shoulder and turned her to me, gently, yet forcefully, so she lay upon her back. “Lova…please, for fuck’s sake….”

“Screw him, Magnus!” She’d shouted, pounding her fists into the mattress. She bolted upright, not even bothering to cover her bare chest. She turned to me, finally, and what I saw broke my heart. Her eyes had hardened, the tissue seeming to transform into stone, like onyx embedded in peridot; the tears like crystals dangling from the corners. Her mouth was set firm in a thin line.

“He killed my sister. He fucking killed Lia and… burned… burned her body, I know he did. Kurt knows he did!” She threw her hands up, flapping them in my direction. “Well, shit, even you know he did, yet the bastard walked. He fucking walked today. Walked his arse right out of that courtroom with those goddamn judges smiling all pervy-like and telling him he’s not guilty and that there’s not enough fucking evidence! Bullshit!” 

She sobbed, once, and a drop trailed from her left eye, painting a line transparent down her reddened, fevered cheek. I reached out to her, to wipe the tear away, but she balked, swiping at it with the heel of her own hand – silently telling me in no uncertain terms that she could handle the inconvenient drop of saline on her own. 

“Why the fuck did Kurt even bother turning the case over to the prosecutors? Why’d they even bother with a preliminary?” Another tear fell. I let it alone. “Why? Is it because he… because he… because Kurt hates me? Because he wanted to put me through hell? Why?” 

“Kurt hates everyone, Lova. But, I don’t know. I can’t say.”

“That’s right, you can’t say. You can’t ever fucking say, can you, Magnus?”

I blinked. “Why the hell is this suddenly about me?”

“It’s not,” she inhaled deeply, “It’s not. It’s just….”

I moved tentatively, wrapping an arm around her shoulder, pulling her to me. Thank God, that time, she let me. She didn’t always let me. Her weight, all of it, fell against my skin, her head upon my shoulder, her short, spiky dark hair tickling my neck and jawline. Her arms drooped helplessly, one against the other between my crossed legs. I stroked her arm, my fingers ghosting over the scar on her shoulder, over her Army tattoo, my hand shaking, unsure -- unsure just how exactly to comfort her. “I know, I know. You miss her.”

“Yes, I do,” Lova sobbed once, and wiped her nose on the corner of my bed sheet. “I miss her a fucking lot."

***

“This tribunal finds the defendant, Johann Mikkelson, not guilty. He is hereby acquitted of all charges relating to the death of Lia Sahlberg. This trial is concluded, the defendant is free to go.”

I’d watched Lova through the end of that trial, earlier that day. She sat there, in the courtroom, beside me and beside Kurt, solid, stoic, in her Ystad Police dress uniform. Her eyes stayed focused upon one person and one person alone, and nothing could have swayed her. Her uncle, Johann Mikkelson, sat in the defendants’ box, his advokat beside him, smarmy and smiling as the verdict was read.

Not guilty.

Not. Fucking. Guilty.

I knew what I had to do. 

I stood swiftly from my chair and grasped Lova around her shoulder. For once, she didn’t fight me. She didn’t pull away. She merely stood, under the protection of my arm and that of Kurt on the other side, and she let us lead her, nearly at a jog, quick as could be, out of the courtroom, out of the general courts building, down the steps, into the car park.

She’d said nothing. She’d made no sound, no movement, nothing.

Even her face didn’t change. It was as if she was still staring at her uncle, daring him to say he didn’t kill Lia, daring him to look her in the face and tell her that he was innocent when she was so convinced of his guilt.

When we were all so convinced of his guilt.

She’d remained in that state until we got into my car, Lova and I. Until after Kurt helped her into the passenger seat, and had tried telling her it would be okay, that he would bring closure to Lia’s disappearance and death, that he would do something to make it right.

I don’t think Lova heard him, or even cared to.

She’d shut down; gone on auto-pilot.

She needed to be left alone, to be quiet with her thoughts, and then she’d explode. I’d seen it before; too many times to even list. It was how she’d coped; ever since Afghanistan – she’d changed so much – since she came home, it was just how she coped. 

I’d learned to cope with it, myself.

I got in the car and cranked the ignition. The Volvo’s engine roared to life, cutting the cacophonous silence. Silence in spite of the city bustling around us, silence in spite of the wind whipping through the streets and the rain… the rain as it began to pummel the roof of my car, the windscreen, and the street below.

I turned to look at Lova and saw Kurt, through the window, his jacket hunched round his neck. He placed a hand upon the glass, willing Lova to turn her gaze to him. Willing her to… what? Forgive him? I nodded, shifting the Volvo into gear. Kurt backed away, and I pulled the car into the road.

I’d expected Lova to scream. I’d expected her to rant, to yell, to get angry, to pound her fists against the dashboard, to show some emotion, some sign of her despair at the tribunal’s impotence; at her own utter inability to get any sort of revenge, to see to any sort of punishment for the man who had killed her sister. 

Instead, she was silent the entire ride back to my flat.

With the exception of this: When I pulled into my spot in the car park, when I put the Volvo out of gear and pulled the brake, when I turned off the ignition and sat there, hands in my lap, looking to her, gauging her readiness, she had said merely,

“I swear, Magnus. I'm going to kill him.”

***

And so I’d taken her, guiding her with an arm around her shoulder, my body close beside her, upstairs to my flat. My little flat on the third floor of the small building on Torngatan, and for a long time she’d said no more.

She’d changed her clothes, out of her dress uniform, taking a pair of jeans and a t-shirt from a drawer I’d cleaned out for her months ago. She'd rarely used it, but there it was, and I was glad it was there for her. I’d purchased her a toothbrush, too, and she used that. For the first time in the three months it was there, she’d used it.

Her brother, Noel, had phoned her, but she said very little to him. I overheard a few “yes” and “uh-huh” and “no” responses but little else. Noel hadn’t been at the trial that day, he was in Stockholm, on business, but he’d heard the news. 

She’d rang off from Noel’s call and joined me where I’d been sitting on the sofa, nursing a cup of tea. I took her cup from the table and offered it to her. She shook her head, no. I set it back down, and set mine down beside it.

“Do you want to talk about it?” I asked. I placed a finger on her chin, turning her face to mine. I smiled, sympathetically. “We can talk about it if you like.”

She remained silent for a beat, then another, and another, the sheer intensity of her stare raising gooseflesh on my arms. She licked her lips and moved in, toward me, her eyes finally releasing mine, falling ever so slightly down, roving over my face, to my lax, open mouth. She moved in further, her hand squeezing the top of my thigh, her breasts brushing against my arm, her lips feathering lightly, oh so very lightly over mine. She whispered against me, her breath tasting of hazelnut coffee, the sound of her voice echoing within the cavern of my mouth. 

“Take me to bed, Magnus.”

***

I stood and held a hand out to her. She grasped me by the wrist, quickly, her hand darting out like a snake striking, holding me firm, tight, so tight that it hurt. So tight that I turned my arm within the circle of her grip and took her wrist just as hard, pressing my pointer finger against her pulse point. I swept her to me, hauling her in like a salmon to a bear, throwing my arms around her and pressing her, firm, to my own body. Her head collided with my collarbone and I cried out with the pain, as did she, but it didn’t matter.

I knew that night, we wouldn’t be gentle. She didn't want me gentle. I knew we wouldn’t be making love. I knew what I was there for. I wasn’t her lover that night, I wasn't her boyfriend (never really was, I supposed), and for all she cared, I wasn’t even human. I was there for her to forget. I was there for her to lose herself in, to fuck her cares and anxieties and heartbreak away.

And I was more than happy to oblige.

I pushed a hand over the bristle-brush of her spiky hair, making the individual strands perk up under my touch, forcing the flap of longer hair out of her eyes. I let my gaze fall to her lips, and she sought out mine: predatory, hungry. She took the sides of my head in her two hands, fingernails raking against my scalp, one catching against the curve of my ear, likely drawing blood. 

She pulled me to her, her mouth colliding into mine. There was and would be no play that night, no teasing – I opened to her immediately and she plundered me, her licks skittering across my teeth. I bit her bottom lip and she growled, curling her mouth into a feral grimace. I gave her my tongue and she sank her teeth into it. The pain drove me on. 

I took a handful of her hair and pulled, drawing her head back, and I ravaged her throat, applying as much pressure as I dared with my mouth and my other hand against her windpipe. I drew an amount of skin into my mouth and sucked, hard. She coughed, and moaned, wailing, and pushed me off of her. I fell backwards, taking one, two, three clumsy steps back until I caught myself straight again.

She launched herself at me and shoved, hard against my chest, pushing me in the direction of my bedroom. I tore my shirt off, and kicked the door open, the doorknob chipping out bits of gypsum as it made contact with the bare, white wall. I whirled back to find her in the doorway, herself naked from the waist up, breathing heavily through her nose. Her chest heaved, her mouth was set in a scowl and her eyes burned right through me. I took the two steps to her and took her, one handed, around the back of her neck, my thumb pressed into her jugular vein, the little hairs in the back catching between my fingers. I pulled her around by the throat and threw her bodily upon the bed. 

“Fuck!” She bounced on the mattress, and I pounced upon her, hitting her full on with my entire body weight. “Magnus, aaaah!” she screamed. “Fuck you.”

“If that’s what you want.” I said, calmly. Not standing on pleasantries, I captured her mouth in the snare of mine and held her there, moving with her measure for measure, foiling any attempts at escape. I fumbled beneath me and undid both her jeans and mine. I worked my hand down and found she was not wearing anything between denim and skin, and I groaned with the sensation of it. Her body was clean and hairless, youthfully groomed. My groin twitched painfully as I moved lower, playing over her soft, soft skin, and shoved two fingers up into her body.

She bucked against me, wedging my hand between her hips and mine, against my hardened cock. I cried out with the pain, and she laughed. She laughed and I repositioned my hand and pinched her in the clitoris. “Jesus fucking Christ Magnus, you bastard!” She bellowed.

I pinched her again below, my mouth at her ear above. “This is what you want, isn’t it?” She shook her head, not to say no, but because her body wouldn’t let her do anything else. “Isn’t it?” I dipped my fingers into her again, pulled them out, and worked the tip of my middle finger over the current centre of her nervous system, pushing hard, causing pain along with the pleasure.

“Not what I want,” she panted. She wriggled a hand in between us, cupped my balls and squeezed, tight. 

“Jesus Christ! Aah!” I screamed, arching my back, my arms stiff at the elbow, bending my body off of her. She pushed at me, and I flipped over, landing on my back. Lova moved quickly, straddling my middle, tenting her arms over my head. She stayed still, very, very still for a long time. Too long a time. I moved my hips a bit, and she pulled away.

“Damn you, Lova.” I hissed, teeth gritted. She grinned down at me, the light from the streetlamp outside glistening off of her white teeth. “Come on. Lova. Come... come on!” I bucked my hips off the bed, desperate for contact, desperate to be inside of her, desperate for….

In a swift movement, she reached between us and grasped my cock, my jeans still tight around my hips, her own having been pushed down somehow, hanging off of one ankle. She kicked at the offending fabric, sending it flying through the air. It thumped against my wardrobe door behind. She grasped my cock again, and, wriggling her knees up beside me, set herself into position.

She sank down upon me in one swift move. 

“Lova!” I cried, clutching her around the waist. I dug my fingers in, bending them at the first knuckle, latching and locking her in place upon me. I moved my hands up and down, ordering her to move, but she wouldn’t. She stayed still below, instead, raking her fingers down my chest, one fingernail scratching over my left nipple. “Oh, God!” I arched, my head stretched back. “Lova, fucking move!” I commanded. “Move, damn you!”

And move she did. She rose up on her haunches and slammed back down, her pelvis bruising, crushing mine. She did it again, and again, and again, and by the fourth time I was unable to take anymore. "Fuck! That fucking hurts!" Before the next impact came, I stopped her with a hand, a thumb pressed into her centre. 

She moaned, threw her head back, and moved against me, her hips waving back and forth over the pad of my thumb, me making little circles there. “Magnusssss,” she whispered. She fell forward on to me, letting me continue to work her into a frenzy. She huffed breath onto my neck and in my ear, moving up and down on me below in short, quick strokes, making me pant and whimper in time with her movements. 

I turned my head and took her earlobe into my mouth. As I bit down on her flesh there, I felt her body tense, her flesh below quivered and vibrated over me, and a sudden flood of heat and moisture enveloped me. I sobbed; she screamed in my ear, a loud, piercing noise -- a moan of pleasure mixed with a keening wail of grief. I let her ride it out, not even turning my ear away from the horrible, yet erotic noises she was making. 

I pulled my hand out from between our bodies and she started moving again, this time going deeper. Enough of this shit. I needed to take control. I wound my arms round her middle and flipped the both of us. I pulled out, and she whimpered at the loss. I seized her by the legs and turned her over, on to her stomach. 

I was not gentle, not in the least. My hands found her hips and heaved upwards, forcing her to her knees. Without a word or any signal to her, I stood behind her and pushed into her. She grunted, her hands scrabbling at the bedclothes, her head turned to the side. She looked behind herself, at me, and scowled. 

I didn’t care. “No. Oh. God... Lo... Lova...this is…not... what… you wanted.” I told her, and thrust home. I thrust home over and over, once… twice… three times, more. She cried out, a loud, short bark of a noise, muffled in the fabric of my bed with each stroke. I hit her deep and hard each time, punishing her arse with my pelvic bones, knowing full well just how much it hurt and I did it again and again and again… and then I shook.

Every muscle in my body seized up, vibrating. My face and hands went numb, I lost all control, my face contorting in a silent scream. “Oh, fuck!” Released, I growled from deep within my chest and collapsed over her body as I spilled myself within it.

“It's what...what you… uhnnnnn….needed.” 

***

Not even a minute after I’d been roused from sleep by the thunderclap, did my iPhone ring. It was a familiar and quite unwelcome sound – the chiming bell ringtone I’d assigned to Kurt Wallander. 

“Fuck,” I groaned, again, patting the side table, groping for the phone. I turned the device right side up and saw, yes, “Kurt” writ upon the screen. I slid the slider at the bottom to answer. “I’m not on tonight, Kurt.” I growled. “Phone up Lova. She’s decided to go in….,”

Kurt cut me off. “She’s not… Lova’s not…” he said, his tone… strange. Wavering, almost fearful. 

I swung my legs out of bed, kicking frantically at the bed clothes. “Jesus, Kurt. What’s wrong? What the hell happened? She’s not dead, is she?”

“She’s not dead, Lova’s not dead,” Kurt said, his voice near a whisper, “I… I just need you down here.” 

“Where is she… I mean, where are you?” I stood, pacing my room, shoving my fingers through my mess of tangled curls, grasping and pulling at the back of my head, willing the pain. “Tell me, Kurt, and I’ll be there.”

“Lova’s place,” he said. I tasted bile. My chest burned and my stomach muscles clenched, painfully. “Her place. It’s… it’s on Matrosgatan,” Kurt threw in, almost as an afterthought. “Get here soon as you can.” 

“Where’s Lova now?” I grabbed my shirt and started shrugging into it, cradling the phone between my shoulder and neck as I, fingers fumbling, tried desperately to work the buttons.

“She’s getting loaded on the ambulance right now.” 

“Ambulance?” I had one leg of my jeans on, and stopped mid-pull of the other. “Jesus! Is she….”

“She’s fine. She’ll be fine. Anne-Brit is going with her.”

“Good, good.” I said, trying not to sound as concerned and upset as I was. Kurt didn't know, in fact -- no one had known about my…relationship…whatever it was, with Lova; and we’d taken great pains to keep it that way.

“I’m on my way.” I rang off, pulled my trousers the rest of the way on, grabbed my keys, slid into my shoes, holstered my gun, and dashed out of my flat, into the after-rain humidity of the Ystad night.

***

In the six years I’d been on the Ystad force, I’d seen some pretty gruesome murder scenes. This one was up there. Not quite as horrible as the jogger tied up to the tree, or the man who was drowned alive, or even the old man who’d been impaled upon a makeshift spike-trap, but horrible nonetheless. 

In spite of the facial distortion death had always left, I’d recognized the victim immediately. I’d seen him only a few hours before, very much alive.

The body lay on its side, one arm thrown in front, the other trapped beneath, pulled back at an angle nearly matching the first. The portly man’s shirt front was blackened-red, no white to be seen anywhere on the fabric, and the man’s jacket was coated in gore, a sheen reflecting; shining in the bright, artificial lights the forensic team had set up. The sheen continued along the concrete walkway, congealing, coating the covered pathway like a bucket of spilt black paint – or two buckets, perhaps three or four. 

It never ceased to amaze me just how much blood the human body could hold.

What was gruesome about this scene to me was not the body itself, but the method of death. Even that, to anyone else around me would not have been that bothersome.

The forensic team, having finished taking their photographs, and otherwise processing what they needed to process, turned the body onto its back, revealing the cause of death.

An immense knife, stuck hilt-deep into the chest, at an upward angle right beneath the bottom edge of the sternum, right where the sternum would meet the xiphoid process. Right in that place where a knife shoved upwards just at the correct angle would cause instantaneous death. Right into the heart.

What was frightening to me about this was that not everyone knew how to make that killing stroke. It was, from what I’d learned, a distinct methodology of killing taught to those in the military, by those who’d learned to use and handle a bayonet.

A bayonet just like the one sticking out of Johann Mikkelson’s chest.

Yes, the body that lay sprawled and blood-covered before me was that of Lova’s uncle, the man who had just been acquitted of the murder of Lova’s sister, Lia. The man who, we were all certain, had kidnapped, possibly tortured, and killed the most important person in Lova’s life – had burned her body and disposed of the bones such that all that remained was some blood, hair, a chip from a tooth, and part of a finger.

And yet, there he lay before me. In front of Lova’s home. With Lova’s hand bayonet – brought home from her days in the Army, from her nightmare days in Afghanistan -- an Excalibur protruding from the rock of the man's chest with her gold-etched initials, “LS” shining upon it like beacons in the dark.

“Fuck me,” I breathed, whispering to myself. “Jesus, Lova, what the hell did you do?”

***


	2. Part Two

The tasteless, watered-down police department coffee burned, scalding as insult upon injury as it ran down my throat. I sucked air, hissed and roared against the pain, but it woke me up. Momentarily. 

I knew I’d feel the sting of it upon the roof of my mouth, probably for the rest of the day, and would likely be peeling bits of skin from there the day after, but I didn’t care.

I yawned, heartily and loudly, stretching my arms up and out behind me as I leaned back in my wooden desk chair. It creaked, complaining under the strain of my weight. I fell forward again, head on elbow, elbow on desk, and I sighed. My eyes felt as if someone had thrown a handful of sand in my face, the lids weighted down with the heaviness of only two hours’ sleep.

On top of that, it was only 7:43 am according to the clock on my laptop computer.

I lifted my head, reluctantly, and took another swig of the blistering brew, half tempted to dump the rest of it over my head, or into my hand – you know, splash the caffeine right into my skin.

Better yet – I thought to nick one of those drug hypodermics from the evidence locker and simply mainline the good shit into an open vein.

Instead, I took yet another sip. 

I inhaled, exhaled, and let myself have just a moment… just a moment of something resembling rest.

I let my eyes flutter closed.

And then my mind wandered.

“I loved him once, you know.” Lova had said, pushing a delicate, white hand through her black hair. She kept her arm bent, her elbow pointing to the ceiling. She turned her head, peering at me through the crook of her arm. 

“Who?”

“My uncle… Jo,” she chuckled, once, resigned, “I can’t even really bring myself to call him that anymore.”

“You mean Johann Mikkelson?”

“Yeah… him.” She rolled onto her side, facing me. The sheet fluttered off of her chest, giving me the most delicious view of her breasts. It took everything I had to keep my eyes fixed on hers. She helped me focus, reaching up and twirling a lock of my hair between her finger and thumb. “How the fuck’d you get so freakishly blond?”

I rolled my eyes up, gazing at her hand. “Born that way.”

“Arse. I hate you.”

I laughed. “Can’t help it if I’m prettier than you.”

“You know you are,” she breathed. 

We both went silent. 

“I’m sorry if I hurt you,” I caressed her cheek, “just now, when we… you know.”

“You didn’t,” she lied.

Silence again. “He used to send us care packages, Lia and me.”

“Johann?”

“Yeah,” she mused, “when we were in the service… in Afghanistan. We’d get these huge boxes full of cool shit: books, sweets, chocolates, biscuits, you know that sort of stuff. He’d like, hide cigarettes for us in open bags of Ricola, you know?” She huffed a laugh. “When we were girls, me and Lia… he always brought us Chicklets chewing gum from the States, and he’d like, read us Hans Christian Andersen stories, while Lia and I would be cuddled up, sat upon his lap.”

“He sounds like he was wonderful to you.”

“He was. I did love him, once,” she replied. “Before.”

“Yeah,” I agreed, “before.”

Before…

My head lolled on my neck, once… twice… three times until I jerked myself up and shook my head, my mussed hair flying about against my scalp like that of a crazed labradoodle. 

My desk phone chimed. Saved by the phone. Maybe. “Martinsson. Ystad Police.” I answered.

“Mags, it’s Anne. Listen, I’m back at the hospital.”

I perked up, straightening in my chair.

“Anne. What’s wrong?

“Nothing, nothing’s wrong,” she said, hesitantly. “It’s just… I sort of need you down here.”

“Is Lova awake?” I stood, shrugged my jacket on and shoved my mobile in my pocket.

“Yeah, she is.”

“Is she okay?” I fumbled my keys in my fingers, separating out the ignition fob for my Volvo. “Can she talk?”

“She can,” Anne-Brit said, “she just won’t.”

I exhaled on a small chuckle. “Didn’t expect her to. She probably won’t for a while now.” I pushed the door open and strode into the morning sunshine, making a bee-line for my vehicle. 

“Well, she did say one thing,” Anne interjected. 

I stopped, my hand perched upon the door handle. “What?”

“She says she wants you.”

“I’m on my way back. I’ll be there in ten.”

***

After all had been cleaned up from the crime scene, after all the blood had been hosed off the pavement, and the body taken away, I’d gone to the hospital the night before to check on Lova. By the time Wallander’d told me I could leave, by the time I’d been able to get my Volvo and drive there, and by the time I’d arrived, she’d been transferred from the ED in the middle of the night to a private room. 

“She’s sleeping, Mags,” Anne-Britt had said, stepping out of Lova’s room and closing the door quietly behind her.

“Sleeping, or sedated?” I’d asked. I sank into one of the moulded plastic visitors’ chairs in the corridor, spreading my legs out in front of me, folding my hands between them. 

“A bit of both, I suppose.” Anne-Brit sat in the chair beside me, slouching down in a feminine mimic of my own pose. 

“What happened?” I asked. Anne-Brit's eyes were rheumy, red-rimmed, bloodshot, just as wasted as mine felt. “Did she say anything?”

“Not a thing, even when she was awake.”

“She was awake? When?”

“When they first brought her in, she woke for a bit,” Anne-Brit recounted, “but she’s a head injury, they had to sedate her, if only for tonight. They said she’ll be okay in a few days.”

“Head injury…,” I repeated, thoughtfully. “From what?”

Anne-Brit shrugged. “I only assume she hit her head on the pavement. Maybe there was a struggle, I don’t know, Mags. I just don’t know yet. We won’t know until forensics gets through with everything.”

I sighed and swallowed hard. “How was she… when you… when you got there?”

“Do you want the watered-down version or do you want the truth?” She’d turned, her knees butted up against the side of my thigh. She placed a hand there and squeezed. It was comforting. 

Sympathetic.

I wondered if somehow, Anne-Brit had her suspicions about my feelings for Lova. 

I couldn’t be sure.

I took her hand in mine. “I always want the truth, Anne. You know that.”

***

The truth was this: Dispatch had received a phone call at 12:20 from a number linked to one of those disposable mobile phones, reporting what they thought was a fight, a scream, some shouting, and some sort of attack at Lova’s address, describing Lova’s car, describing Lova’s uncle.

The patrol cruisers arrived to find Lova’s uncle dead; to find Lova draped over her uncle’s body, crosswise, her legs splayed out behind his back, her torso perpendicular to his middle, and her head bowed, as if in prayer, in front of his ample stomach. 

Like his, her hair, face, and clothing were all drenched, slathered in a thick, paint-like coat of the man’s blood. 

The fingers of her right hand were wrapped loosely around the bayonet, which, in turn, had been thrust into a precise position up and under her uncle’s ribcage.

She’d suffered a large, open wound to the top of her head, which, itself bled profusely, and for which she’d been treated in the emergency department, along with a massive concussion and knife wounds to her right hand and fingers.

Jesus, it didn’t look good.

The very thought of the possibilities made me physically ill.

***

I met Anne-Brit in the corridor again after she rang me the next morning. I was nearly bowled over by a gaggle of doctors and orderlies flying at top speed, quickly navigating through the hallway, pushing a screaming old man upon a gurney. I plastered myself against the wall and held my hands up in the air, transfixed by the sight, until they turned the corner and faded from view. 

Anne jogged up to me and grasped me by the bicep, dragging me bodily back to Lova’s room. “She won’t talk, she won’t talk to anyone, not even the doctors or nurses.”

I lengthened my strides to keep up with her. “It’s okay, she does that sometimes.”

“You’ve known her longest, Mags.”

“Yeah, I have. So?”

“Tell me she didn’t do it.” Anne-Brit’s eyes glossed over with unshed tears. She clutched at the flaps of my jacket, every word punctuated by a tug on the fabric. Lova was Anne’s best friend, her confidante. They promoted to detective together, and shared everything.

Well, almost everything.

I know for a fact Lova never told Anne-Brit about us. Lova and I. 

“Please, Mags.”

I shook my head, taking Anne’s hands in mine, removing them delicately from my clothing. I embraced her, gently, and then placed my hand upon the doorknob to Lova’s room. “I don’t know, Anne. I really don’t.”

Anne’s head drooped to her chest. “She didn’t do it,” she mumbled, “she couldn’t have.”

“Go home,” I ordered, placing a hand on her shoulder, and then my open palm on her face. “Go home, get some sleep, you look like shit.”

She smiled. “Speak for yourself, pretty boy.”

“I’ll phone you if she says anything important. Promise.”

“I’ll hold you to that.”

I entered Lova’s room. Thank God she’d been given a private suite. I shut the door behind me pushing against it to ensure that it latched. I set an ear to the door, checking to see if sounds could be heard through it. 

Just in case.

They couldn’t. 

The nondescript, iodine and alcohol smelling hospital room was shaded quite dark. Darkness won out against the blaze of the midday sun - itself trying desperately to plunder through the individual slats of the closed horizontal shades.

Sound was minimal, save for the steady beep beep, beep beep, beep beep of the heart monitor and the constant underlying swishy swirly hiss that always emanated from the HVAC. 

I shed my jacket and tossed it over the back of an upholstered chair near the bathroom. I walked, my steps measured, slow, careful, and quiet; heel-toe, heel-toe, heel-toe, over to the other side of the room. I sank down, slower yet, into a large recliner near the head of Lova’s bed. 

She appeared to be sleeping.

With her, I knew appearances certainly could be deceiving.

I studied her for a long, long moment. Watching the up and down, in and out of her breathing, tracing the curve of her cheek, ear, and jawline with my eyes. 

Her dark, spiky hair was almost completely hidden beneath a swath of white bandages, tinged a bit ruddy at the crown of her head. Her right hand, as well, was covered in layer upon layer of gauze and tape. 

I leaned forward and reached a hand up, grasping her good one in mine. The IV tubing taped to and disappearing into her hand felt hard and cold against my skin.

“Lova?”

No response. I pulsed my fingers against her once, gently. “Hey. Hey, Lova.”

“Magnus?” she responded, weakly. 

“Yeah, it’s me.” I stood and bent over her, planting a small kiss on the bridge of her nose. “I’m here.”

“Hi,” she smiled.

“Hi, yourself, beautiful.” I grinned back. “Hurt?”

“Like a motherfuck,” she groaned, palming her forehead. 

“Yeah, I’ll bet it does.” I perched on the edge of the bed near her hips and twisted my body to face her. I pushed a small swath of black hair out of her eye. “What happened, Lova?”

“I don’t know,” came the quick answer. 

“Honestly?”

“Honestly.”

“Do you remember anything? Has anyone told you anything?”

“No,” she let her left hand slip lower, over her eyes. She squeezed the top of her nose, cringing with the pain of it. “I didn’t want to talk to anyone, I didn’t want to hear.”

“Do you want to know now?” I knew better. Bad news was best delivered to Lova Sahlberg only when she was ready for it. On her own terms.

She uncovered her eyes. “Yes.”

“Johann Mikkelson is dead.”

“Good, I’m glad,” she said quickly, detached, vacant. “How?”

I stood, pacing away toward the wall. “You really don’t remember, do you?” She braced her hands at her side and pushed up. I rushed back to her side, an arm around her back, guiding her into a sitting position. “You shouldn’t….”

“I’m not going to take this shit lying down, Magnus. Tell me.”

I tented my arms over her, my palms pressed into the mattress. “Okay.” I placed one lingering kiss on each of her cheeks. I pulled back and fixed my eyes upon hers. “It’s bad,” I prefaced.

“Fucking tell me, Magnusson.”

“Your bayonet, up under the sternum, through the heart. He bled out.”

“What?” She blinked, rapidly, her eyes flooding with tears. I grasped her face between my hands, forcing her to look at me. 

“You were found at the scene, Lova, holding the blade.”

She gripped my forearm, digging her fingernails into the skin, causing me pain even through my shirt. Her mouth twisted in a moue of grief and anger. The welled-up saline in the canthi of her eyes flowed freely. “What… I… oh God!”

“Did you do it, Lova?” I shook her a little bit. I knew I shouldn’t have, but I did. 

“God… I…” she started, gripping me harder. I moved my hands from her face to her shoulders, digging my own fingers in. “Magnus, I… oh shit! I don’t know! I… I don’t remember anything!”

“Where was your knife… the one from Afghanistan?”

“The one from…” she mumbled, “it was in my car!” Lova declared, her eyes darting to and fro. “I picked it up from the tinker’s just the other day, and left it… left it in the boot! I had the papers for it. I carried it legal!”

“I know,” I calmed her, stroking her neck, her face, her chest. “I know you did. You do everything legal, don’t you?” She nodded rapidly, her breathing becoming erratic, shaky. “Shhhh,” I soothed, gathering her to me, pressing her head into my shoulder. “It’s okay, Lova.” I pulled back again, making her focus on me. “It’s going to be okay.” 

She started shaking her head back and forth, her eyes squeezed shut, mouth set in a grimace, bearing her teeth. “No, no it’s not. No it’s not. It’s not.” She gulped air. “It’s not okay.”

“Lova, please.” I gripped her neck, gently yet firmly. “Lova, please, keep it together.”

She covered her mouth with her hands and stared off into space, somewhere over my left shoulder. “I wanted to, Magnus. Oh, God, I wanted to kill him. I wanted him dead. What if… what if I… what if I…?”

“Stop, please.” I begged. “Stop. Don’t say anything else.”

“But, I have to!”

“No, you don’t. You said you don’t remember.”

“I don’t!” She yelled. “I don’t, I fucking don’t remember any of it!” She covered her face again, her fingers digging into the skin of her forehead. She stayed there, breathing, making hollow, desperate noises into her hands, the sound of it and the sobs that came with it… I felt the hateful burn of tears behind my own eyes and I blinked against it.

I needed to be strong for her. I wanted to be strong for her.

Lova coughed, emerging from the hiding place of her still-shaking hands. She wiped her nose with the back of her uninjured hand, then her eyes. “I need a few minutes,” she whispered, her head bowed, “alone, please. Magnus, I need to be alone.”

“But I…”

“I’ll lose it if you don’t leave now. Just for a few minutes, please. Please.”

I knew better than to argue. It was either leave or suffer through a Lova explosion. I opted for the former, desperate to prevent the latter. “Listen… do you… do you want a tea or something?”

“A tea… a tea would be… nice.” She kept her eyes down, focused entirely upon the frantically fidgeting fingers in her lap. 

“I’ll be back in a tick,” I said, tapping my five fingers upon the end of the bed, near her foot. She said nothing. I exited the room and pulled the door shut quietly behind me.

It took me precisely ten minutes and thirty-two seconds to make my way down to the commissary on the first floor, to purchase two cups of hot tea, to fork over twenty kronor to the nice lady with her hair in a pink net, and to balance those cups, rather precariously, on the way back to Lova’s room.

I turned my back to the door, engaged the handle with my elbow, and pushed. 

The beeping of the monitors had changed; they had morphed into a solid whine, alarms going off in an alien-sounding cacophonous symphony. 

And I turned. 

My eyes roved over the room. Something was wrong. Something was very wrong.

Realisation hit, and I stood there, utterly gobsmacked. 

Damn her.

The bed was empty, the sheets and blanket tossed about haphazardly, hanging off the end of the bed frame, skirting along the floor.

The IV tubing hung limp from the bag, the fluid dripping out, mixed with residual blood, making quickstep little split splats in upon the tile floor.

My jacket was missing from the chair back.

Her clothes were gone from the wardrobe, the wooden hangers swinging forlornly from the hooks.

“God… damn it!” I tossed the twenty kronor worth of tea into the bathroom sink and bolted out the door. I ran, pelting down one side of the corridor -- finding her not there -- then the other, nearly tackling the nurse. I grasped the poor woman by the shoulders, panting. “Lova… Lova Sahlberg… have… have you seen her?”

“Well, I was just about to go check on her. Her equipment’s gone haywire, now that you say….” I needed to hear no more. 

I turned and bolted, skittering to a halt and crashing sidelong into the stairwell door. I forced it open with my shoulder and my hip. I hurtled myself down the stairs as fast as my legs could carry me – two, sometimes three risers at a time. I stopped on the second floor landing long enough to retrieve my iPhone, unlock it and dial.

I started running again, letting the phone ring in my ear.

I kicked open the door to the car park. I looked frantically around, twisting my head side to side, eyes scanning everywhere it could. No sign of Lova. Nothing. As if she'd vanished into the ether. 

One ring, two rings, three rings… then an answer. “Wallander.”

“Kurt!” I bellowed, running full out upon the tarmac to my car. “Kurt, Lova’s done a runner.”

“Fuck.”

***

“Why the fuck was there no security, Kurt?” I bellowed, pacing the station briefing room like a caged panther. “Where was the uniform?”

“You're a cop. You were there,” Noren huffed. “Why didn’t you stop her?”

I ignored him, gnashing my teeth together and rolling my eyes. “Kurt?” 

“You know damn well we can’t get a uniform on a person without an arrest or a protective order, and we had neither of those things!” Kurt crossed his legs beneath him and leaned against the wall, his arms folded over his chest. “No preliminary investigation, no formal arrest without the prosecutor’s okay, you know that. She was free to go whenever and where ever the hell she wanted.”

"But you've ordered the prelim!" I shouted. "You've been to the prosecutor."

"Yeah, I have." Wallander admitted. 

"Then she'll be a god damn fugitive the minute that arrest order's signed."

"I think the prosecutor will see it that way." Kurt shrugged.

“Fuck the prosecutor!” I shouted, still pacing. I shoved a hand through my hair, grasping the ends at the back of my head. 

My stomach cramped, chest burned. I tasted bile and fought with everything I had to keep my gullet quiet. My head hurt, pounding with worry. “She should have been secured!” I stopped, mid stride. “Now she’s out there… ” I pointed out the window, “probably scared shitless, panic writ large... the fuck knows where, doing God knows what… probably thinking, worried as hell that she killed this arsehole!”

“I thought she did kill that arsehole….” Noren spat. 

I whirled on him. “Shut the fuck up, Noren! No one gives a shit what you think.” 

“Magnus!” Kurt barked. 

Noren turned, squirming in his seat. “She totally did it,” he muttered under his breath.

“Screw you, Noren!” I snatched two handfuls of Noren’s uniform fabric and yanked him up, out of the chair. I shook him, the little rat bastard. “You fucking take that back!”

“Detective Martinsson!” Kurt boomed, pushing himself off the wall. "Let him go or I'll have you up on assault charges!"

But I didn’t let go. I couldn’t let go.

There were hands on my shoulders, on my arms, gripping me, hauling me bodily away from Noren’s arsehole face and his… his… “Magnus! Put him down!” I felt the fabric pop and give beneath my fingers. I’d torn his uniform. Good. He didn’t deserve to wear it in the first place.

I seethed, hissing air through my clenched teeth. 

I clamped tighter on Noren’s lapels, shook him again once, twice, then let him go, pushing him away from me, splaying my hands in the air. I turned, took two steps away, and pummeled my fists upon the wall.

The whiteboard shook.

Two marking pens and an eraser clattered to the floor.

“You take that back,” I muttered. I pressed my forehead against the wall, looking down at my shoes.

“He’s gone, Magnus.” A pair of soft, small hands stroked my back, working their way up over my shoulders, down my arms. “Noren's gone,” Anne-Brit whispered, calmingly.

I heard and felt, rather than saw Wallander approach. “Go talk to the brother,” he said, calmly.

“But, we need to find….” I protested.

“Go. Talk to the brother,” Kurt repeated, “get an update on the company, on him, on Lia, Lova, everything. Go, now. You leave now you’ll be in Stockholm by three.”

“I don’t need to go to sodding Stockholm, Kurt! I need to go find Lova.” I insisted, turning now to face the shorter man, looking down my nose at him.

He didn’t even flinch. “You need to do what I tell you to do.” 

“No, Kurt. I’m going out there, and I’m going to bring Lova back.” I yelled, pointing out the window, bearing my full height down upon Wallander’s pudgy little face.

“No, Magnus!” he roared back, the force equaled to mine.“You will get in your car and you will go to Stockholm. You will do your fucking job, and you will do it if you want a job to come back to!”

I inhaled, harsh, through my nose, exhaling upon a jaw jut forward. “Fine!” I threw my hands in the air. “Fine. I’ll go talk to the brother, but it’s a futile fucking exercise, Kurt. Futile. A waste of a goddamn twelve-hour round trip drive. He’ll tell us nothing new.”

“Then the job is perfect for you, isn’t it?” Kurt said, clipped. “Just go.” He heaved the door open, strode out of the conference room, and slammed it shut behind him, making both Anne-Brit and I jump.

I stood there, scowling. 

Anne-Brit lay a delicate hand on my shoulder. My first instinct was to shrug it away, but I let it be. I knew I needed it. "Find her, Anne-Brit."

Anne tipped her head, quizzically, and squinted up at me, one eyebrow cocked curiously high. I could just about see the thought pop, fully formed, into her head. Honestly, I didn't care what she knew or what she thought she knew about Lova and me. I just wanted Lova safe. 

"Please, Anne. Do this for me. You're the best missing persons cop I know. Please."

"You know I will, Mags. I'll get right on it." She gave me a sisterly pat. "I promise." 

***


	3. Part Three

Faced with a six-hour drive from Ystad to Stockholm, or that length of a drive anywhere else for that matter, a person driving alone may have a listen to the radio, or to the iPod, or even to an audiobook. 

Or silence. I preferred silence. Sometimes, on long drives, I’d just sit in quiet, or the thing called quiet, which, in reality was the residual soundlessness left behind after the thrum of the tyres against the tarmac, the air against the windscreen, the hissing and moaning and beeping of other cars. 

I liked my silence.

When I was as tired as I was then, however, I also liked my music. Some Arch Enemy would have done me nicely just then – a heavy dose of thumping death metal screamed into oblivion by a hot, hot blonde – yes, that would have kept me awake and alert for sure. 

Otherwise, I was in grave danger of falling asleep at the wheel.

I suffered from extreme insomnia that day; that on top of worry to the point of panic and intermittent bouts of nausea over Lova’s disappearance.

But there was no relief from that. I had work to do.

That day, for my auto entertainment, there was neither Angela Gossow’s melodious screams nor the sweet, sweet silence.

Instead, I listened in, via my iPhone and Nyberg’s speakerphone, as he attended the post-mortem of Johann Mikkelson. Nyberg had driven to Malmo that morning, as it was decided, and he watched the proceedings, watched Malmstrom work himself red -- elbow deep in Mikkelson’s guts, viscera, and coagulated blood.

Better Nyberg than me.

Bad enough that I had to listen to the sounds of squished flesh being thrown into steel bowls and the rattle of horrifying surgical implements as a counterpoint to Malmstrom’s droning monotone. 

Which was fine because I was more than keen to know the results. I was more than keen to hear something, anything that could have exonerated Lova from the murder of her uncle.

I even prayed for it.

And I never prayed for anything.

I half listened to the preliminaries, to the description and identification of the body, the details of the y-shaped opening of the body cavities, removal of the intestinal viscera, the stomach, liver, kidneys, bladder…blah blah blah. I didn’t care about all that.

I was interested in the blade. The murder weapon. Lova’s knife.

And finally, Malmstrom started in on the chest cavity.

“The weapon is a Swedish Army issue, US made OKC-3S hand-mount bayonet, likely thirteen inches long, generally with an eight inch blade which will be measured and recorded upon removal. The blade is fitted with a Dynaflex handle for right-hand use, the handle being gilded with the initials, ‘LS’. The weapon currently lies in situ in the body, at an insertion point… twelve…. point seven… twelve point seven millimeters below the sternum.”

There was the sound of some paper shuffling, and tools being placed down and picked up again. Then Malmstrom continued. “The blade has been inserted into the body at a…forty-five… no, forty-three degree angle, snapping off the xiphoid process, proceeding upwards to bisect the heart between the…” there was a squishing noise to which I cringed, “right atrium and the…right ventricle, the tip of the blade… oh, let me find it… ah, yes; the tip of the blade neatly incising the right aortic arch.”

I reached down and repositioned my iphone in the cupholder, aiming the speaker in my direction so I could hear better. 

“Are you getting this, Magnus?” I heard Nyberg’s whisper.

“Yeah,” I replied, “shut up so I can listen. I wanna hear this part.”

Malmstrom droned on. “As the blade sits in the body, there is no evidence of turning, torsion, or twisting. The blade seems to lie as it was first inserted as there is no evidence of back-tearing along the serrations, or re-insertion. In my opinion, there was a single thrust into the body. The blade’s tang is flush… with the skin, the blade and the finger grips facing toward the… right side of the body, at a….ninety… yes a ninety degree angle perpendicular to the sagittal centreline of the body.”

I listened for a few more minutes as Malmstrom removed the blade, cleaned it, and tagged it, preparing the first link in the chain of evidence necessary to send it back to Ystad with Nyberg. 

I fully intended to have a look at that knife. A good, hard look at it.

Thinking about the blade and where Malmstrom said it was positioned, I thought I’d also have to have a good hard look at the scene photos. I didn't want to on a personal level, but I knew I had to.

The finger grips of the handle pointed to the right. 

To the right.

Just like this whole thing didn’t seem right. 

To the right.

It was all wrong.

I shook it off, nearly missing the exit I needed - 160a - to get to Noel Sahlberg’s office in the Stockholm City Centre. I pulled over two lanes of traffic, waving an apology to an old lady in a Ford Mondeo, who honked her horn angrily at me as I cut her off. 

I paid the toll and found the exit I needed to Ralambshovsleden. I’d be there in a matter of minutes.

Finally, I could get this shit over with and get my arse back to Ystad.

But not until I’d talked with Noel Sahlberg. Lova’s brother.

It was like, meeting the girlfriend’s family for the very first time.

No, it wasn’t. It wasn’t at all.

I was becoming giddy; and I couldn’t afford to be giddy.

I needed a night’s sleep.

I’d crash at my brother, Ansgar’s rather posh place in Ostermalm. He was still in the States on a massive construction project, and I had the key to his flat.

Plus he kept a damn good rotating stock of lagers in his fridge.

And I knew I’d probably need one. Or two. Or three, likely four.

I lifted the phone to my mouth and spoke into the receiver. “I’m ringing off, Nyberg. That’s all I need to hear.”

“Hey, Magnus, wait a minute.” Nyberg shouted. “You still there?”

“Yeah, I’m still here.” I replied, turning into the car park.

“Well, um. The prosecutor signed the arrest warrant for Sahlberg this afternoon. It’s going to prelim tomorrow. Just… just thought you should know, in case… yeah. Just in case.”

“Thanks, Nyberg. I said. "Listen, has... has Anne-Brit made any headway in finding her?"

"I don't think so, Magnus. She said she'd ring you if she knew anything, right?"

"Yeah," I sighed, resignedly. "Anne hasn't called yet."

"Then she hasn't found Lova yet. Give it time, man. Give it time."

"Yeah, time." I repeated. "Nyberg, I’ll phone you back later.”

I pushed the button to ring off. 

I pulled into a stall in the building's car park, killed the ignition, and sat there, my elbow on the steering wheel, scratching the side of my head. 

“Where the fuck are you, Lova?”

*** 

I flipped the loop of my tie over my head and tucked it under my shirt collar. I twisted my elbow upwards, nearly hitting the roof of the Volvo, as I worked enough torsion to get the top button fastened. I hitched up the tie near to the point of choking myself, grabbed my shoulder bag and lit from the car.

Noel Sahlberg’s office was on the fifteenth floor of a sixteen storey building. I was ushered into a rather posh waiting space by a rather posh (meaning, tall, blonde and curvy in all the right places) receptionist by the name of Ilsa. Ilsa winked at me and brushed her hand against the back of mine as she handed me a cup of coffee. 

I thanked her, but I didn’t wink back.

I sat in the waiting area, observing, taking everything in. Leather seating, slate tile on the walls, marble flooring, marble worktops over mahogany furniture, etched glass on the doors and immense plate glass windows with a view for miles over the Stockholm skyline. 

The name, “Sahlberg-Mikkelson Group AB” was splashed in green, yellow and blue enameled steel across the wall behind Ilsa’s desk, the backlights illuminating little bars of colour against Ilsa’s smooth, platinum hair. 

The family business.

Lova had told me her family was in the shipping business, importing goods from the US and China and wherever the hell else. When she did, I’d expected to find her brother sat behind a small, metal desk in an office fashioned out of an old shipping container on the docks; notice boards on the wall tacked up with bills of lading of all different colours, an ancient computer terminal at the desk and an adding machine on the credenza.

What I did not expect was this… this grandeur. 

I had also imagined her brother, Noel, as sloppy, white-shirted, overweight, sitting at said metal desk stuffing a Max hamburger into his pudgy face whilst wiping his greasy hands upon an already stained polyester tie.

What I didn’t expect was the Noel I saw in the flesh.

He was tall, about my height, thin, athletic build – wider at the top, like a swimmer. Sharp, handsome features reminiscent of an old Hollywood actor. He was dressed impeccably in crisp shirt, jacket and waistcoat; making me in my modest tie and sport jacket feel immensely underdressed.

I stood up, picked up my bag and ran a hand over my shirt to push out some of the wrinkles. Noel approached me quickly, his strides springy and friendly. He held out a hand to me and smiled broadly.

“Herr Detektiv Martinsson,” he greeted, grasping me with an incredibly firm two-handed grip. “So nice to meet you, I’m Noel Sahlberg. Call me Noel.”

“Pleasure, Noel,” I responded, “you can call me Magnus.”

Noel put an arm around my shoulders and guided me back toward a spacious and airy conference room on the other side of the foyer. He showed me to a seat. I placed my bag on the floor and sat. Noel situated himself opposite me.

I leaned forward, placing an elbow on the conference table. “I’m not sure if you know why I’m here.”

“My uncle is dead, and you’re investigating whether my sister had anything to do with his murder.”

I nodded. “Yes.”

“Your colleague, Kurt Wallander? He phoned me and told me you were on your way up here. You have a good drive?”

I shrugged. “Could have been better.”

Noel shot out of his chair and opened a cabinet on a sideboard. “That’s a long-arsed drive, Magnus. Do you want a drink? Coffee?”

“I just had one, nothing thanks.”

He pulled a soda can from the refrigerator. “Mind if I?”

I put up a hand. “No, go ahead.” 

He smiled, sat back down and popped the can open, taking a large swig. “So, what can I tell you?”

“Tell me about the business.”

“I went through all of this with Herr Wallander when Lia was killed.”

“Yes, I know. That was for that investigation, this is for this one. Would you mind please answering my questions? I did come a very long way, you know.”

He sighed, smiled, closed-lipped, and nodded. “It’ll be my pleasure.”

“Please, then,” I gestured, asking him to continue.

“SMAB is a shipping company. As you probably already know, we import, export, everything and anything. We have the largest dock space in the harbour here in Stockholm, and we have an exclusive shipping agreement to handle all of IKEA’s export business to the United States. My grandfather, Martin, ran the business up until his death last year, and then my uncle, Johann. I took over a short time ago whilst Johann was under investigation and was on trial.”

“Were there any plans for him to return if he’d been acquitted?”

Noel shifted in his seat, ever so slightly, and crossed his arms in front of his chest. “I would have welcomed him back with open arms, Magnus. I wanted him here, needed him here.”

“But now he’s dead,” I observed.

“But now he’s dead, and the company will remain mine to run.”

“Company doing well under your guidance?” I crossed my arms in a mimic of his pose. I wanted to see if I could get him to feel uncomfortable at all, gauge his reactions, and there is little more unsettling than subtle mimicry. “Profitable?”

“So far so good!” Noel leaned under the table top and rapped twice against the mahogany wood. “We’re a few percentage points up this year compared to last.”

“Any regulatory problems? Investigations? Citations?”

Noel shook his head. “Not under my watch.”

“What about under anyone else’s watch?”

“We had one citation whilst Johann was CEO, but that was not his doing.”

I nodded. “Taken care of?”

“Slate’s wiped clean.”

I worked my fingers over my mouth and chin for a moment, thinking. “Listen, Noel, I need you to get me updated financial records, preferably to take back to Ystad with me, can that be arranged?”

“What do you need that for?”

“Well, when a returning CEO of a company is murdered right before his return, we have to check every possible angle, don’t you agree?”

“But, man, I just said we were doing well.” He leaned forward in his chair, bracing his hands on the edge of the table. 

I shrugged and put up my hands. “I know, I know, listen. I just have to get the information. I can’t tell you if we’re going to do anything with it, but I have to have it.”

He stayed silent for a moment.

“Or,” I rolled my eyes, and tilted my head back and forth, “Or, you know, I can always request the prosecutor to issue me a warrant, and we can have the Stockholm police come in here and seize it. Quite publicly. Boxes marched out the front door and all, ooh. Not good.” I shivered.

Silence again.

I shook my head rapidly, squinted, and twisted my lips in a mock grimace. “But I don’t think you’ll want that.”

Noel stared at me, hard, for what seemed an eternity, his forearm upon the table, his other arm bent, hand on the surface, body pushed forward. He inhaled and exhaled heavily, shaking his head ever so slightly. His mouth curled into a closed lip smile, morphing with another breath into a full on grin. He threw his hands in the air, resigned. “It’ll take a while to email and copy what you need.”

I shrugged. “I’m staying in Stockholm. I’ve got all night.”

Noel reached behind him and picked up the phone from the side table. He stretched over and dialed a series of numbers. “Giselle? Yeah, it’s Noel. Listen, get me paper and pdf copies of all the financials for the past….” He looked at me questioningly. I held up five fingers. “For the past five years. I’ll shoot you an email to send them to, and bring the paper reports to my office. Yes, tomorrow is fine for the paper as long as the pdfs go out today.”

I nodded and slipped my card across the desk. Noel picked it up, inspected it, and recited my email address to his assistant. He thanked her rather nicely, and rang off. “There,” he said, looking at his watch. “You should have all of it on your iPhone there by seven.”

“Thank you.” I nodded.

“Listen,” Noel said, enthusiastically. “I’m sure you have more questions, but I’m sick of this place. Let’s go get a beer.”

“I don’t think I should…” I started.

“I’m buying.” Noel grinned, waggling his eyebrows. “I know just the place.”

“Fine, but I’m still going to ask you questions, you know.” I warned.

“Yeah, I know,” Noel acknowledged, “but I’d rather answer those particular questions with a few beers under my belt.”

***

“My brother is a funny guy,” Lova had told me, once. “Get him out for a drink or two and he’ll tell you anything, and I mean anything.”

"Yeah?" I asked, "is beer like a truth serum for him or something?"

"Just the opposite," she responded, "when he's drunk you can't believe a fucking word he says."

***

I genuinely liked Noel Sahlberg. I could see a lot of Lova in him. They shared an ascerbic wit, a tendency toward friendly insult, yet, a deep mean streak; as well as that absolutely shocking head of black hair. Funny, but one of my first thoughts upon meeting Noel was the realisation that Lova’s black hair was actually her natural colour.

Pathetic that I’d think of things like that at a time like this.

Sitting there in that bar, with her brother, I’d started to worry again. 

I heard nothing form Anne-Brit. This was not one of those times when no news was good news, and the wait caused an immense pressure in my chest that wouldn't go away.

I wondered if she was out there, somewhere, alone. Hungry and cold, perhaps? Frightened? Did she know about the warrant for her arrest? Had she found shelter somewhere? With someone she trusted?

I was sure Anne-Brit was hot on her path and that Anne would phone me as soon as she’d heard anything.

Maybe.

I only hoped that phone call wasn’t going to be one to tell me that Lova had been found dead.

I took a long, thick draw off my third Heineken bottle, smacking my lips and hissing as the heady liquid poured down my throat.

An image of Lova, face down in the river, floating, her arms out to her side and her legs spread wide behind her niggled at the back of my mind and I had to drink it away. 

Another swig. Another swallow. Another hiss.

“You okay, man?” Noel gave me a pat on the back.

“Yeah,” I said, “just buzzed, a bit tired. Long day.”

He tapped the edge of his, I think, fifth bottle of beer against the neck of mine. “I hear you. Long arsed day indeed.”

I set my drink on the bar and turned to look at Noel. “What happened after your grandfather died?”

“What… what do you mean?”

“I mean, who got what? I know the will and all that shit is back at the station somewhere as part of Lia’s investigation, but I want to know from you. What was it like between you all after your grandfather died?”

He took another deep drink, eyeing me over his bottle. “Fine. Fine. Yeah, fine. It was all good.”

“Yeah, any fights between siblings, hard feelings, squabbles over money, that sort of thing?”

“Nah,” he replied, rather quickly, waving a wobbly hand, “no fights. Everything was cop… copac… copashetic… fuck it, everything was good.”

“Who stood to inherit what?”

He looked at me, a little bit bleary, took a deep breath, and said, “When the old man kicked, it all went to Uncle Johann -- may he fucking burn in hell -- he was the old man’s son. Since our parents are dead, mine and Lia’s and Lova’s, I mean, if anything happened to Uncle Jo, then it would all go to Lova, then Lia, then me, in like…that order.”

“You mean to tell me, with Johann in jail, Lova could have inherited, what?”

“Ev-ery-thing,” he slurred, “the house the cars the company the yacht the toys the villa the cottage the shit the crap the goddamn lot of it.” He pulled his chin back, stifling a belch.

“That bother you?”

“Nah,” he waved it off. “Lova was good to me, always has been.”

“Okay, so, why did you take over the company whilst Johann was under investigation?”

“I didn’t,” he replied, “I was interim, only, in-ter-im, yeah, until he came back, and well, until now.”

“Why not Lova, then? Why you?”

“She told the lawyers to fuck off when they asked her if she wanted to be interim CEO.”

I laughed. “That figures.”

“Besides,” Noel set a hand on my shoulder, “she’s a fucking cop, anyway, no offence, man, and nothing, I mean nothing, could have torn her away from that shit. I’ve no fucking clue why you guys like your job so much, but she wouldn’t leave it, not for a billion kronor.”

“What about the money, then?”

“Well, that all went to Johann, and like, stayed with him. He kept it, even through the trial and everything. Now, if he had been found guilty and sent to prison though, well, then it’d all go to Lova, wouldn’t it? All that money, right? To Lova? I’ll bet she had some ideas about what to do with it.”

“And so with Johann dead….” I started.

He tipped his beer in my direction. “Lova’s pretty fucking wealthy right now, isn’t she?”

***

Thankfully, the bar was close enough to my brother’s place that I was able to get there on foot. In fact, I’d driven from Noel’s office to Ansgar’s flat and left my Volvo in the car park there.

No chance of being caught drink driving that night.

Noel had taken off with his driver in a large, black car some time ago, and I’d sat nursing the end of my last Heineken. 

I finished, set the dead solider down upon the bar, pushed my stool back with a noisy screetch of wood upon tile, threw a few bills on the bar, and exited the pub.

Outside, the night was cool, humid, the air saturated with the smells of water, rain, piss, and industry. 

A woman passed by me – long reddish hair, high heels, scantily dressed with the exception of an overlarge white leather jacket, which she wore draped round her shoulders. 

I caught a slight glimpse her face as she passed beneath the halide lamp.

Angular cheekbones, long nose, impossibly large eyes, thin, hard-set lips.

My eyes followed.

I knew the face. 

The hair, the clothes, even the height, were all wrong, all so very, very wrong, but….

The face.

“Lova?” I called out. “Lova!”

She didn’t turn around. She kept walking. I followed her, my feet shuffling at a jog. “Lova, hey, Lova! It’s me, Magnus! Hey! Wait!”

The woman picked up her pace, hunched further into her heavy leather jacket, and turned at the next corner. 

By the time I got there, she was gone. She’d simply vanished, vanished into the Stockholm night.

“Lova?” I yelled, my voice echoing down one alley and up another. I swiveled my head in every direction, searching deep into the halide-lit street. Nothing. No one. I growled and kicked out at a loose piece of pavement.

“Lova.” I whispered. 

***

I’d opted for silence on the way home the next morning. My hangover strictly dictated that I indulge in nothing else.

I’d emailed the financial records I’d received to Anne-Brit. 

She still hadn't found Lova. As a conciliation, she ensured me that she’d have everything printed and would have our forensic accountants dig into the numbers right away.

I didn’t know what we’d find, but some of Noel’s answers niggled at me.

I just had to figure out why.

Only, my brain wanted nothing to do with figuring anything.

I’d had two more beers before I’d gone to sleep; two of my brother’s expensive imported lagers, and then I stripped myself naked and practically threw myself into the guest bed.

I'd dreamed of that woman in the street that night; the ginger whore in the four-inch Perspex heels with the leather jacket and Lova’s face.

I’d dreamed of taking her, hard and fast, in my brother’s bed.

And I’d dreamed that, instead of plunging my cock inside of her, that I’d plunged an eight-inch military issue bayonet up under her tits and into her heart.

And when I did, her long red hair fell away to black spikes and the heels slipped off and… I’d just murdered Lova.

Fuck!

And then a man in an expensive suit, who looked a lot like Noel, shook my hand and handed me a cheque for two billion kronor.

That and he sat me behind an immense glass desk with a phone and a Mac computer and a secretary that looked just like Ilsa; only her tits were ten times bigger and her sweater ten times tighter.

I’d just reached out to touch those tits when the alarm clock chimed.

Yeah, I tried to forget about that dream on the drive home.

**

It was half three in the afternoon when I finally made it back to my flat. I parked the Volvo in my spot, not caring if I’d left it slightly askew and would no doubt draw the ire of my cranky neighbor, Mr. Dorfgren when he tried to fit his Peugeot in his spot beside mine. I grabbed my shoulder bag, my jacket and tie, and trudged up the steps to my flat, my feet shuffling noisily on the risers.

I fumbled with my keys in front of my door, still a bit wobbly in the legs and still a bit fuzzy in the head. My body fell forward, just a few inches, and my head hit the door.

Only when it hit the door, the door didn’t stay in place. It gave, moving in a few inches, opening slowly, slowly, into my flat.

I swear I’d locked it when I left.

“Shit,” I whispered. My heart pounded in my chest and I was suddenly fully awake, eyes sharp and limbs taut. I dropped my bag, jacket, and tie, and un-holstered my gun. I clicked off the safety and checked the magazine – quietly.

I aimed the piece, using the back of my now-shaking left hand to push the door the rest of the way open. I held my breath and took one step, two, then three, into my small living room; sweeping the barrel of the gun to the left, then the right, then behind me. 

I breathed, dropped the gun, and repeated the process in the kitchen. Breath. Barrel up, left, right, behind, down. 

I breathed again. My stomach churned. Clear.

I held the weapon at my side and angled my body down the hallway. I turned and took aim into the bathroom – left, right, up, down, clear.

Then my guest room – left, right, up, down, clear.

Office – back to the wall, turn, left, right, up, down, clear.

I crossed the hallway to my bedroom on the end at the left side. I inched myself along the left wall, back to the wall, feet quiet, muscles tensed, fight or flight, breathing minimal. 

The bedroom door was open. No lights on, but the afternoon sun outside illuminated the room enough for my purposes, I knew.

I craned my neck around the doorjamb, inhaled, and turned, gun pointed. 

My bed was unmade. 

But that was not unusual. I never made my bed.

What was unusual about it was the woman-sized lump under the duvet on the left side.

And the soft breathing noises coming from the bed. Exhale.

And the shock of black, black hair sticking out in all crazy directions from beneath the top of my green duvet.

I sighed and let the aim of my gun drop to the floor. I relaxed, letting my shoulders drop. My heart slowed -- but it swelled at the sight. 

I re-latched the gun's safety and re-holstered the piece. 

My body fell sideways, my shoulder jutting into the door jamb. I let my head follow against it, just simply being there, basking in the view, taking in the scene before me. 

I sobbed, relief flooding in from all directions. 

My flat was safe. I was safe.

More importantly – Lova was safe.

Safe and sound and naked in my bed.

Just where I needed her to be.

***


	4. Part Four

“Oh, God, Lova. No!” I cried, my voice a reedy, staccato whisper. “Please, please… oh, Jesus, don’t.”

She was crouched, hovering above me, her body curled at the spine around me, legs on either side of my pelvis; animalistic, feral. I lay, naked and exposed upon my bed, my arms and legs splayed to the four winds. 

I was not bound, but yet, I couldn’t move. 

 

Rendered immobile by my own brain – my own dream state. 

Fucking sleep paralysis.

Lova, too, was unclothed, but she was covered; drenched from hair to foot in rapidly coagulating blood. I could almost smell the foul, organic, iron tang of it. Whose blood it was, I had no idea; but the darkening, clotting liquid dripped, slowly, slowly, oh so very slowly from her matted-down hair, over her eyes, coating her lips, her breasts, her….

She reached a crooked finger out, her hand shaking, and she traced two lines of gore down and across the centre of my chest, making a little ‘x’ over the base of my sternum, between my tensed pectoral muscles.

I inhaled, sucked air, but choked on it. I couldn’t breathe.

“Lova!” I cried, using whatever wind I could muster. “This is not… this is… no! Please, don’t do this!”

She remained silent, merely tilting her head this way and that, her eyes considering their prey, roving over my bare flesh, her tongue darting out lasciviously now and again to lap up the blood dribbled upon her lips. I gagged when she did that, tasting bile, having to turn my head to keep myself from choking on it.

Without a word, she pulled an immense blade from God only knew where, and brandished it, showing me just how prettily the light moved over the steel of it -- glinting blood red and gold; showing me just how beautifully the handle fit in her delicate, tiny right hand.

With a deep, quiet, long-rumbling, inhuman growl, she raised the knife and pointed the tip right at the sticky little ‘x’ she made on my skin. It was all I could do but lift my head and stare down at it, willing my chest not to move with my rapid, shallow breaths. 

I felt the point breach my epidermis and I hissed with the sting of it.

“Please,” I begged.

Her eyes flashed. She hunched her shoulders, and I felt the muscles of her legs tense against my thighs, clutching me tight. “No!” I cried out. She held the blade over me, at a half-angle, and my mind made a point of showing me the handle -- pointing to my right. To my right. 

With a sharp, sudden movement, Lova thrust herself forward on me, brushing her wet sex over mine, at the same time plunging the blade up under my sternum, into my flesh, up to the hilt. 

There was no immediate pain. 

I heard more than felt the skin pop, the muscles tear, and the bone beneath snap. 

And then she laughed, threw her head back and her hands in the air, and laughed; as if offering me up as a sacrifice to some sort of hellacious god.

Or to herself. Probably to herself. A sacrifice to herself.

Because then -- my heart broke; the pain burst forth in a blinding white blaze, a flaming hot rend of agony. My eyes screwed shut, my jaw unhinged, and I screamed, the sound and the effort of it tearing my throat apart.

Only my scream didn’t sound like a scream.

It sounded like an old fashioned English telephone ring. Ringring… ringring… ringring…

“The fuck,” I mumbled. I flipped over and fumbled my hands, slapping them upon the side table in search of my iPhone. I found it, blindly pressed the screen, and brought the device to my ear.

“Mmmmm, hallo.” I coughed. “Mar…Martinsson.”

“Mags?” 

I cleared my throat and inhaled an immense amount of air through my nose, letting it out on a shaky breath. “Yeah, Anne-Brit, is that you?”

“It is. You okay?”

“Yeah, yeah,” I replied. “Bad dream.”

“Oh, no, Mags, did I wake you?” I stretched my arm out across the bed; finding it cold, unslept in, empty. “You need to be here in half an hour anyway, may as well get uppy-uppy, yeah?”

“Figures,” I mumbled.

“What?” Anne-Brit perked.

“Nothing, nothing, Anne, that wasn’t directed at you,” I replied, swinging my legs off the side of the bed and sitting up. “What’s going on?”

“I thought you should be the first to know, Mags.”

I raked my fingers against my scalp, scratching vigourously. “Know what?”

“The fingerprints came back on the bayonet, and they were Lova’s. No one else, just Lova.” At the sound of her name, I touched my chest where she’d knifed me in my dream. Clean as a whistle. Whew.

But then, I looked into the vacancy beside me, and realised that she did, after all, break my heart.

“Shit,” I replied, and then as an afterthought, figured I should ask for evasion’s sake, “did you find her yet?” There was no way in hell I was going to tell Anne-Brit that Lova’d been to my flat. Or anyone else for that matter. I needed to make it sound as if I still hadn’t seen her.

Which, in a way, would revert back to the truth if she had truly left me again.

“No, trail’s gone cold,” Anne-Brit said.

I stood up, stretched, and padded into the kitchen, only after letting my eyes rove over the living room. Both empty. 

“There was a trail?”

“Yeah, some CCTV in Stockholm had a possible hit two nights ago.” 

“Stockholm?” I thought back to that ginger whore I’d seen in my brother’s neighborhood, and I wondered. “Was it her?”

“Ruled her out,” was all Anne-Brit would say. “Not her.”

That answered that question.

“Keep looking, okay?”

“I will,” Anne-Brit sighed. “Listen, Mags. Kurt wants you to check out Lova’s house today, you’ve got a warrant on your desk. Pick it up when you get here. Go on over and search the house, her car, everything. See if maybe you can… if you can….”

“Yeah, I know.” I took a long drink from a glass of water. “I’ll do that.”

“You’re worried about her, aren’t you.” Statement, not question.

“I am,” I acknowledged, “a fucking lot. More than you know.”

***

I'd held out hope that Lova would be there when I woke that morning, but par for the course, she wasn’t. Only that time, I wasn’t able to guess the exact moment she’d left. That time I wasn’t clued in to her destination, where I knew I could find her. That time, she’d truly snuck out – disappeared again in the middle of my night -- leaving me alone, making me feel untrustworthy, hollow, and for lack of a better word, sad. Not to mention, once again fearful to the point of deep seated panic over her safety.

So, once again, damn me for a fool.

She’d been tucked up, safe and warm in my bed when I'd arrived back from Stockholm. Sight for sore eyes. “Lovely, lovely, Lova.” I’d whispered to her still-sleeping form.

She stirred slightly, grumbled some incomprehensible words, and pulled the duvet higher up over her face. I laughed. “Lova,” I repeated, in a sing-song voice, pushed myself off the door frame, and took two steps into the bedroom. 

I dropped my bag, jacket, and tie, and set my phone on the wardrobe shelf. I kicked off my shoes, letting them go where they would. I said her name again, still singing, a bit louder, and unbuttoned my shirt. I shrugged out of the cotton and let it fall to the floor.

She grumbled again, her breath hitching, and she turned over, away from me. “Lova, wake up.” I said, still keeping my distance from the bed. 

I knew damn well not to touch a sleeping Lova without giving her a verbal warning.

Last time I did that I wore a rather unattractive black eye for an entire week.

I took another step, setting my hand on the mattress beside her knee. I jounced the bed, slightly. “Hey, there, Lova.”

“Fuck off, Magnus, I’m sleeping.”

There she was. I smiled. “What are you doing here?” I sat on the bed and pulled the duvet down. She squinted against the afternoon sunlight, using her hand to shield her eyes. “I’m sleeping, what does it look like?” She blinked, scowling. “Or, at least I was sleeping.” She yawned. “Where were you last night?”

“Stockholm,” I replied, “Kurt sent me up there to do some follow up on your uncle’s case.”

“You stay at your brother’s flat? Where we stayed when we saw Porcupine Tree?”

“Yeah,” I nodded. “You know I’ve got a key, and he’s still in the States, so,” I shrugged, and took my key fob out of my trouser pocket, and tossed it in the little bowl on my side table. “You’re trying to change the subject.”

“No, I’m not. Fuck off.”

I let out a breathy chuckle and pulled a hand down my face. “Okay, Lova…I’ll ask again. What are you doing here?”

“Okay, Magnus… I’ll say again,” she responded, mocking me, “sleeping,” she yawned.

“No, I mean, what are you doing here?” My fingers caressed her hair, pushing back the single flap of longer hair amongst the black spikes. I bent, sideways, and brushed my lips against her cheek. “Don't get me wrong. I am extremely happy to see you. You had me worried sick, you know.” I breathed, silently against her. She blinked, turning her face to mine. She pressed her lips against me, and I felt, more than saw, her frown. I pulled back, concerned. “What is it?”

She covered her eyes with her hand. “I had no where else to go, Magnus. I didn’t think you’d be back so soon. I didn’t think you’d be here,” she said, matter-of-factly, “I’m sorry.”

“You don’t need to be sorry. You know this place is just as much yours as mine,” I whispered.

“No.” She sat up abruptly, swung her legs out of the bed, and gathered my bed sheet to her chest, getting to her feet. “I’ll leave. I’ll go. You don’t need me to be here.” She bent here and there, gathering up her clothes and shoes – and my jacket – “Jesus, Magnus, if anyone finds out you’re harbouring me, you’ll be in some serious shit. I’ll leave.”

I stood, swiftly, and clutched her upper arm. “No,” I spat. She struggled against me. I grabbed her other arm, and shook her a little bit with each phrase. “No, you’ll stay here. You’ll stay here, and no one will have to know you’re here. I don’t care about the shit. They can go fuck themselves, Kurt can go fuck himself, for all I care. You’ll stay. You’ll stay with me until we figure this out and get you out of this.”

“I can’t stay here, Magnus!” She pushed against my chest. “You’ll have to turn me in. I know there’s a warrant for me. I know Kurt’s given me to the prosecutor. I know. You’ll have to bring me in, Magnus.”

“I won’t do that.” I pulled her quickly to me. “I can’t.”

She stopped struggling, suddenly becoming very still. She dropped her hands, letting the sheet fall to the floor, exposing her nakedness to me. “You’ll have to, so I have to leave,” she said, her head bent. 

I released her arm and touched her chin, bringing her face up to mine. “But, you did nothing wrong, Lova.” 

“You don’t know that!” She cried, stepping resolutely away from me. I caught her up again, gripping her around the waist. “I don’t remember a fucking thing, Magnus! I don’t even know if I killed that bastard or not. I could have! I don’t even know! How can you be so sure if I don’t even know?”

“I’m not. I’m not sure,” I admitted, whispering. 

“Then why be so fucking stupid on my account, Magnus? Why?” 

“Because I intend to do everything I can to find out.”

***

She lifted her head to me, her lips parted, so close, so very close, and her eyes roved all over my face, flicking back and forth between my eyes, up and down from eyes to lips… to lips… to my mouth. My mouth suddenly itched for her. I licked my lips, parting them even before she needed them to be. 

“Why?” she repeated, barely audible. 

I didn’t answer. Well, I did answer. I answered in a different way. 

I bent and lifted her, cradling her to me. She tensed at first, but then relaxed, letting her muscles melt into and her flesh meld with mine. She felt feathery against my skin, so small, and so scared, and so impossibly soft. I set her down upon my bed, stood back up, and unfastened my belt and trousers. 

Lova brushed my hands aside. She grasped the fabric of my trousers, joined with my boxers, and pulled the whole ensemble down over my legs. I wriggled out, kicking the clothing to the side. “Magnus,” she whispered, “why?”

I set a knee upon the mattress, curling my arm around her waist, taking her lips with mine. I let my tongue linger just above her reddened skin, and she widened for me, taking me inside, working her own tongue over my teeth, undulating within the sides of my open mouth, the underside of my tongue and I moaned, long and indolent into her. 

She echoed my sensual lament, the very sound of it sparking and awakening every nerve in my body, every muscle, opening every blood vessel. I pushed her, gently, back onto the bed clothes. She worked her fingers up and through my twisty hair, gently, lovingly, making little circles against the back of my skull with her soft, pliant finger pads.

I broke the kiss, sliding downward, down, down her body, using my most sensitive flesh to experience and taste little bits of her skin at neck, chest. I drew libidinous lines of moisture over one breast, and then the other – and she arched into me. My arms encircled her waist, and I pulled her up to meet my lips. I bent further, curling into her, swirling my tongue over her abdomen. She cried out and wrapped her legs around mine, bringing my cock up against the back of her thigh.

“Why?” she breathed on yet another moan. 

Again, instead of answering, I worked the flat of my hands up the backs of her thighs, spreading her legs wide; and she allowed me this. I shifted her to the edge of the bed, knelt on the floor before her, and placed her legs over my shoulders. “Magnus,” she warned. 

I ignored her.

“Oh, fuck. Magnus… you’re not….”

“I am.”

I sat back on my haunches, pushed my head forward and swiftly buried myself in her. Lova was not hygienic, and unlike those women I’d had who insisted upon ritually cleansing themselves with horribly fragranced and offensively sweet hibiscus or rose or lavender smelling things, Lova was primal. She was real, she was human, and the very scent of her drove me on.

I plundered her, every inch of her femininity, from the outside and the inside, and she wriggled and writhed against me. I hitched up on my knees a few inches and took her with my two fingers; my lips continuing their work above -- licking, sucking, pulling at that little bundle of nerves unique to women and designed only for a woman’s arousal and delight.

She’d been through enough pain. I was determined to enthrall her, to give her only pleasure.

I felt the bed move, the mattress butting into my throat, as she sat up. She grasped my hair and pulled, gently, stropping her fingers open and closed, open and closed, open and closed in my messy curls, pushing me and pulling me in a perfect rhythm with the movements I made below.

She sobbed, sighed, and bent at the waist, curling herself over me. She scrabbled at the skin on my back, burying me in the crook of her body. “Oh, Fuck! Aah!” She lifted her knees, trapping me between her thighs, and squeezed. I couldn’t breathe, but I didn’t care. My lips went numb and my fingers tingled.

At the same time, my tongue was flooded with a blast wave of heat, a tsunami of moisture and an earthquake rapid pulse against it. “Magnus! Oh, God, M… M… Magnus!” She wailed, her words coming out on the wave of a shaking, keening, moan. 

“Lova.” I replied. I smiled and pulled back, caressing her shins, kissing up the inside of her thighs, calming her. 

She fell back onto the duvet. I moved quickly to cover her body with mine, my own need throbbing painfully between my legs and in my chest. She reached down and took me in her hand, guiding me into her. 

Lova hissed between clenched teeth and threw her head back as I entered. She again wrapped her legs around my waist, inching them higher and higher until she held me firm around the chest. In that position, her centre was at that perfect angle, that as I moved in and out of her, pushing and pulling, ebbing and flowing, it felt like heaven. Like God was creating heaven right in my gut, whirling and swirling and expanding, shooting off rays of warm heat and light into my chest, my arms, legs, and even my face. 

“Lo… Lo…Oh, God, Lova.” I moved faster, and she shifted down again, pressing her heels into my arse, giving me little kicks and presses with changes in my speed. 

That white heat, that brilliant pleasure permeated every molecule of my body and overtook me utterly. I closed my eyes against it and that light became little bright points in the dark of my vision. 

My muscles twitched and contracted, every single one of them. My hands curled in hard upon Lova’s arse, my toes clutching, the muscles of my throat pushing air and tearing a great roar from me as I, like she did, collapsed fully and completely into my pleasure. “Lova, oh, Lova.”

I withdrew from her, reluctantly, and lay back down on the bed, on my side so that I faced her, elbow on the mattress, hand supporting my head. Still catching my breath, I traced patterns on her chest and stomach with my pointer finger. I smiled at her, huffing through my open grin. 

She didn’t smile back.

“Why, Magnus,” she panted, “why… why are you so willing to let me stay? You’re risking… your career for me.”

I huffed air through my nose and inhaled deeply. “You still don’t understand, do you?”

“No,” she shook her head and shrugged.

“Do I really need to say why?”

She turned her head to me, met my eyes, and blinked. “Maybe you do.”

I traced my hand up between her breasts, up her throat, and cupped her face. I let my eyes go soft, and I sighed. “Because, Lova, I love you.”

She kept silent for a long, long moment. Her aspect hardened; jaw taut, brow furrowed, teeth exposed, eyes once again that hateful, unyielding visage of onyx over peridot. She abruptly shoved my hand from her face, scowled, turned her body away from mine, and said, simply: 

“Don’t.”

***

“Magnus Martinsson.”

I signed the evidence check out sheet, and Martianne handed me the small plastic bag containing Lova’s key fob. “Thanks, M,” I smiled, handing form and the pen to her through the little opening, “keep the bin open, please, if you don’t mind. I’ll have these back by day’s end.”

“Anything for you, Mags,” she grinned sweetly. I swear, if there hadn’t been a cage-lined pane of glass between us, the old love would have leaned over and pinched my cheeks. 

Lovely lady.

I stopped at my desk, picked up, and pocketed the warrant; not that I’d need it. 

***

I arrived at Lova’s house and parked my Volvo on the street. Unlike most cases, where I’d be able to suss out a definite plan of attack for a search, this one I had some difficulty with.

I’d been in this house numerous, hundreds of times. I’d been in her kitchen, in her sitting room… in her bed. Which, I suppose if you look at the silver lining, gave me an advantage. I knew what was supposed to be there and what was not. 

Within the house itself, nothing was out of the ordinary.

But then I hadn’t expected it to be.

I didn't even think Lova made it into her house on the night her uncle was killed, which left me more questions than answers. One, why was Johann even at Lova’s house near midnight that day? Two, why did Lova decide to stop at home before heading into the station? Three, did Lova even know Johann would be there? Did she invite him there? Did he come to seek some sort of reconciliation? Ask for forgiveness? I’m sure there was much work to be done after this visit, and I was starting to make mental lists of those things.

But first, I needed to finish my search.

Lova’s car was parked on the left side of the drive up, which to me, was strange. I knew for a fact that she babied that car, her BMW (quite an expensive ride for a Ystad police officer, but she had family money, I’d always supposed), and parked it either in the garage or on the right side of the apron, nearer the house, and away from the neighbor’s children. 

In fact, I knew she could not have parked the BMW in the garage on the left side as that was where she stored her motorised sled and her ATV. I opened the garage door to confirm those things were still there. And they were.

So, either: one, she was only going home temporarily, and decided to park on the left against her normal routine; or two, someone else’s car was already parked in her normal spot when she'd arrived.

Given that Johann was present, I’d presume the latter.

But then, where was Johann’s car? It wasn't there on the night he was killed. If that was the case, how the hell did he even get there?

Jesus Christ, more questions.

Fine, I thought, start with the BMW. I fished the keys out of my pocket, and unearthed them from the depths of the poly bag. Brushing off some residual fingerprint powder, I depressed the unlock button on the key fob, and also the button that opened the trunk.

A search of the passenger compartment brought up nothing. Literally. The car was impeccably clean and tidy. She’d often teased and chastised me for having such a mess in my own car, and I’d poked her right back for being a neat freak. Under the seats, glove box, steering column, rear seats; nothing. 

I lit from the car, walked around the back, and checked the boot. Spare tyre, tyre iron, emergency kit, gym bag, hiking shoes, hiking poles. I moved the gym bag aside and…

… holy shit.

I blinked at what I saw. “No way,” I breathed. My jaw went slack and my breakfast curdled a bit in my wame. Suddenly the coffee didn’t feel so pleasant. 

With shaking hands, I whipped a pair of nitrile gloves out of my back pocket and donned them, quickly. I lifted the item, carefully, two-handed, from the boot and studied it. “Jesus Christ, what the fuck is this, then?”

A pink sheet of paper was taped to the item’s leather cover. I lifted it, squinting at it.

That sheet of paper told me that the object I held belonged to, and was registered by number 789200-445 to one Lova Sahlberg, Ystad, phone number 46 417 845943. The note also stated the date the item was dropped off at this particular shoppe, and the date Lova picked it up.

The item was noted to have been repaired from its state of being in dire need of a sharpening, a polishing, and a re-seating of the tang upon the handle. It was described upon the pink slip of paper thusly:

“13-in. bayonet, 8-in. blade, r. hand grip, gold inscription. ‘DS’”

I shook myself out of my reverie. 

Talk about more questions. My brain ran through each of those as I quickly bagged the bayonet, scanned the rest of the boot for anything else of interest, and slammed the top shut. 

I strode back to my car, threw the bagged knife on the passenger seat, and climbed in. I sat there. Simply sat there, breathing, my head bent against the steering wheel, blocking out all sight and sound so I could just think.

Think.

Think, Magnus. Lova had told me her bayonet was in the boot of her car, and that she’d taken the pains to register it as she should when she returned from Afghanistan.

There was a bayonet in the boot of Lova’s car, registered to Lova.

The bayonet in Lova’s car matched, for the most part, the description of the bayonet used to kill Johann Mikkelson.

Only, the bayonet used to kill Johann Mikkelson was locked away with Martianne in the evidence locker behind all that glass and all those bars.

The initials on the bayonet used to kill Mikkelson were “LS.”

The initials on this bayonet were “DS.”

Who the fuck is “DS?”

Who the fuck indeed.

I leaned back, sighed, and threw the Volvo into gear. Just as I did so, there was a rap on the passenger side window. “Herr Martinsson?”

I shifted back into park, and mashed the button to lower the window. “Hej, Benny,” I greeted the boy. Benny Ulverson was the young child of Lova’s next-door neighbors. Seven years old, he was one of those sharp, intelligent young men who had aspirations of joining the police force when he was older. Adorable, but I was sure he’d change his mind someday. “What can I do for you, Ben, my friend?”

“Where’s Lova?” He asked, gripping the open window with his hands, and setting his chin atop the ledge. “I haven’t seen her for days and days!”

“She’s… um… she’ll be back soon, okay, Ben?”

“Okay, well,” he hemmed, “I found something of hers, I think, and I wanted to give it back to her.”

“Really? I can take it for you if you like.” I got out of the car and jogged around the front. I grasped Ben gently by the shoulder and guided him away from the busy road. I leaned against the back of Lova’s BMW and he stood in front of me, beaming, with a look of immense pride on his face. 

“I found this in the side garden,” he bounced on his little feet, “while my sister and I -- we was making mud pies, and… and we dug this up,” he showed me a small, black, somewhat unrecognisable object covered in mud, wet, and muck. He wiped the back of it on his already filthy shorts and held it up to me. “I think it’s hers. Can you give it to her please, Herr Martinsson?”

The boy, the lovely, lovely, lovely, blessedly wonderful boy placed the object in my hand. “Thank you. Thank you, so much, Ben.” I grinned at him, widely. “I’m one hundred percent sure Lova will be absolutely chuffed to have it back.”

“Yer welcome!” he sang, “if I find more while I’m diggin’, I’ll letcha know, kay?” The boy grinned again, bowed, and skipped off to once again cover himself in the finest filth that Sweden could produce.

“Great detective work, Ben,” I called after him.

Great work indeed. Best fucking detective work I’d ever seen.

What he’d handed me was a mobile phone, the brilliant lad. One of those cheaply made, small-screened, tiny-buttoned jobs that one would purchase on holiday, or as a temporary replacement when a more expensive phone is in for repair…

…or, I’d surmised, when one wished to make anonymous 112 calls to emergency.

I pulled yet another poly bag from my pocket, dropped the phone into it, sealed it, and threw it atop the knife in my car.

I hopped in, started the ignition yet again, and headed straight back to the office.

I had some serious work to do.

***


	5. Part Five

Lunch back at the station was a sad affair of a few takeaway sandwiches, some shared bread, cheese, and a communal jar of Nutella; served up with coffee that grew cold and fizzy drinks that grew warm as the meeting wore on.

We, meaning Anne-Brit, Nyberg, Wallander, and myself, sat huddled around the battered wooden centre table in the glass and old paneling-walled conference room. This was the place in our office that Nyberg lovingly called the “war room.” 

It was not comfortable, not at all; and it was, in my opinion, designed that way. 

 

The space hadn’t been updated in years, decades even -- and the musty lath, plaster, and old moisture smell hung in the air like an unseen fog. The room, with its dirty windows, dark walls, and bright fluorescent lights stirred within its occupants a sense of urgency, an imposed focus; a feeling of wanting to get the fuck out of there and get a breath of clean air before the lungs turned to crumbling masses of black mould.

The room was also the most private place in the office. For this case, we needed privacy, desperately. The rumours of Lova’s guilt or lack thereof were already circulating around the station like a whirlwind; and we knew any more talk could be disastrous to the case, and even possibly, to our careers. 

More importantly, to Lova’s life.

Therefore, we held the meeting behind closed doors.

“Two knives,” Nyberg whined, incredulously, “how the fuck are we now dealing with two knives?” 

Said weapons were displayed upon the table top before us, both in plastic bags, one bag labeled “DS” and the other “LS” in marking pen, according to the markings on the blades themselves. 

I shrugged. “This one, labeled ‘DS,’ is for certain Lova’s,” I reported, setting my hand upon it. “It’s the one I found in her car, where she told me it was. It’s numbered and registered to her.” 

“What about the other?” Anne-Brit asked, pushing its twin forward upon the table. 

“The numbers have been soldered off,” I said, picking the bag up, and pointing to the scar of metal along the bottom of the tang, “no registration number, and a check of the database found nothing else matching its specific description. According to the government, this blade doesn’t exist.”

“So,” Wallander chimed in. “Whoever owns it, owns it illegally.”

I pulled a face and opened my palms to the ceiling, chucking the bag back down. “I suppose it is, so as it sits now it’s not traceable. Great.”

“Dead end,” Wallander sucked air through his teeth. “Next!”

“What about the phone?” Nyberg pointed to the now cleaned-off device, which sat in its own poly bag on the table top.

I picked it up, weighing it in my hands. I opened the bag and pulled the device out. “It turns on now. It just needed a cleaning and a charge. I haven’t checked it yet.”

“Well, what are you waiting for? Turn it on then,” Wallander ordered, tersely, waving a hand in my direction. 

I frowned and rolled my eyes. I mashed the ‘on’ button, and the little phone came to life with a dual tone sound, an LG logo, and a number that appeared on the screen. “Take this down,” I said, and gave Nyberg the phone number I’d read on the tiny splash page of the phone. “Check that, will you?” 

“That’s a Stockholm number,” Nyberg noted, nodding. “I’ll get right on it.” He whisked a post-it note from the pad he’d been writing upon, stood swiftly, and moved to exit the office. 

“Hold up,” I ordered, stopping him with a hand. I thumbed through the text messages on the little phone. The words of the text itself didn’t show up, as it was an inexpensive piece of shit, but the number did. “The last number texted to on this phone is 46 8 445888 98. Check that one too, yeah?”

“That’s another Stockholm number,” Nyberg observed, eyebrows raised. “I’ll run it.” I nodded thanks, and Nyberg left the room, shutting the door quietly behind him.

“What’s the last number dialed, Mags?” Anne-Brit moved beside me and peered at the phone over my arm. 

I pushed a few more buttons, checking the call log. “The only number dialed was 112.” I replied, “and the time…” I pulled out and checked the initial report form on the table in front of me, “yes, okay. The time coincides with the time dispatch received the 112 call for the murder. The text was sent…” I scrolled over again, “about thirty minutes before that call.”

“Whoever owned that phone,” Wallander observed, “witnessed the murder.”

I placed the phone back in the poly bag and set it down, rather reverently. 

“But I’m still bothered about these.” Anne-Brit gestured to the knives again. “Who is DS? I don’t think it’s as much of a dead end as you do, Kurt,” she shot him an irritated look.

“Well,” I began, “I know Lova got her knife issued to her in Afghanistan.”

“How do you know that?” Wallander eyed me suspiciously.

“Magnus and Lova knew each other before the force, Kurt, you know that,” Anne-Brit chimed in. “They’ve been friends for years. They did academy together.”

“Y… yeah,” I stuttered, “so, she…she told me, about the Army and things.”

“So, her knife has the initials DS, which makes no sense because her name is Lova. Starts with an L, not a D. All of her police records say her name’s Lova, and there isn’t a single D in her name. I know, I cleared her and interviewed her for her job here. I’d remember.” Wallander recounted. 

“Could DS be a family member? Someone she wanted to remember? A dead relative or something?

“No,” I replied, “the initials are put there at issue to identify the blade to the soldier… soldier. Soldier.” My words trailed off, quieter and quieter as I thought, as an idea blossomed, nearly fully formed in my head. I snapped my fingers and rose from my chair, pacing the room. “Anne, can you go into the archives and pull some of the docs from the last investigation? The one into Lia’s death?” 

“Yeah,” she said, tentatively, “what do you need?”

“Anything related to the family. Birth records, death records, a copy of the will. I need to know who the people were in Lova’s immediate family, including Lia and Noel, and,” another thought, “can you cross-reference all of that with recent military records; say, over the last five years or so?”

Wallander sighed and grunted. He crossed his arms over his chest and leaned back in his chair. “Goose chase, Magnus.”

“No, it’s not.” I declared, whirling on Kurt. “The knife. I think the one marked LS is… or was… I think, actually Lova’s knife, with her initials on it…and that she traded blades with someone she served with, someone who was important to her. We just need to prove that somehow.”

“What the hell makes you think that?” Wallander curled his lips dubiously, leaning forward, elbows upon the table.

“My brother, Ansgar, was Army. He told me once that they’d do things like that. Soldiers, they… they switch mementos with another soldier, a friend, when they get sent home. Ansgar swapped uniform jackets with his friend, Anton, when they were both shipped home.” I picked up the knife marked ‘DS.’ “I mean, look at how much care Lova took with the knife she had. She brought it to the tinkers to have it sharpened and polished and restored to an almost new condition. Why would she do that otherwise? It’s not like she’s going to use the knife in every day things. It’s not like she’s going to use it to chop wood, or to cut fishing line or as a piece of cutlery or….”

“… or to murder her uncle to take revenge for the death of her sister and out of anger that he wasn’t chucked in jail for it and to claim her inheritance to the family fortune, right, Magnus?” Wallander interjected, sarcasm dripping from every word.

“Kurt, listen!” I spat. “That knife, whoever it belonged to was important to Lova.”

Kurt turned around in his chair and threw his hands up, exasperated.

“What do you need, Mags?” Anne-Brit interjected, laying a hand on mine. 

I bent down to her. “I need to know if there is anyone in her platoon, an old friend, an army buddy, maybe anyone in her family who was also in the army with the initials DS. I know Lia was in the army, Lova told me so, but I don’t know when she served, or where she served. Can you find that out for me, please?”

Anne-Brit shot from her chair and was half way out the door when she said, “It’ll take a few days to get some of the records, but I can at least get started with what we have in our own files and in the databases. A start should take me about fifteen minutes and I should have at least something.”

“Do it, please, Anne.” I practically begged.

Anne exited the room quietly, leaving Kurt and myself alone.

“Waste of time,” Kurt mumbled.

“Not a waste of time!” I hissed through gritted teeth. “Whoever this… this DS is,” I pointed to the bag marked, ‘LS,’ “is likely going to be the owner of this knife, by trade or otherwise with Lova, somehow. We find the former owner of this knife, Kurt, I think we find our killer.”

***

Things were starting to coalesce and fall into place. Maybe, perhaps.

Or perhaps not. I didn’t know. But we had something, we had a trail to follow, thin as it was, and it was something.

But was it enough?

I still wasn’t sure at all whether Lova committed the heinous act or not, but at least we were getting somewhere. I was relieved beyond relief that Lova’s own blade, the one marked “DS” had remained in the boot of her car, where she said it was. 

Chalk one up for Lova.

I’d thought…no; I knew, the next bits of information as they came in from Nyberg and Anne-Brit could, or possibly would, make or break the case for or, for that matter, against Lova.

I prayed to whatever god would listen that it would be for Lova.

Please.

I didn’t think I could take it if she was guilty of this. 

My heart couldn’t take it; and it was already fragile, having been sliced up into tiny pieces and glued back together twice already over the past forty eight hours.

“Don’t,” she’d said. I told her I loved her, she said, “don’t” and then she was gone again.

“Don’t.”

Fuck that. I do.

I will.

***

Before lunch, I’d learned of the gory circumstances of the death of Lia Sahlberg. Nyberg and Wallander had been in charge of that investigation, as Anne-Brit and I were elbow deep in a drowning in a small lake near Marsvinholm Manor park. Lova was involved only emotionally, and was given a case involving the death of a young boy in a barn fire to distract her from the death of her sister.

It didn’t work.

But then, no one thought it would.

From what Wallander recounted, the remains of Lia Sahlberg were found in a holiday cottage near Malmo. One of a few owned by the Sahlberg family. Lia had lived in Stockholm, in a flat near that of her brother, Noel. 

Lova was the only Sahlberg to have stayed in Ystad. Lia had, according to Noel, decided to take a holiday at the Malmo cottage in order to recover from what he described as a “nervous breakdown” due to the death of her beloved grandfather.

“Lia was only supposed to be at the cottage for the weekend,” Wallander said, “and we got the 112 call from Noel Sahlberg when she didn’t return to Stockholm and didn’t return any phone calls or texts for five days after that.”

“We got another phone call from Johann Mikkelson, also reporting Lia missing, on the day after.” Nyberg recounted. “Kurt and I drove out to the cottage where Mikkelson said she’d been staying. It was pretty remote, so there were no other homes nearby, and no one else around. It was mid-winter so no one else was in the area on holiday. The place was surrounded by woods, and the cottage itself was only accessible on foot, by motorised sled, or ATV.”

Kurt plopped down in a chair and tented his fingers beneath his chin. “When we got there, Lia’s car was parked down the trail, and the place was burned to the ground.”

I whistled. “You call out arson?”

“Yes, of course we fucking called out arson,” Kurt said, impatiently, running a hand through his hair, “they called it incendiary. Someone set the place on fire, and it went up like that.” He snapped his fingers.

“Okay, and Lia?” I asked, equaling his impatience. 

“Never found a body, but there were traces of hair, blood, and some bone fragments near where the stone hearth remained.”

I squinted. “The body was what… incinerated?”

Wallander shrugged. “Burned to dust, bones and all.”

“How’d the fire get so hot?”

“High impact fuel, according to the fire freaks,” Nyberg said.

“Okay, so,” I said, carefully, “how’d anyone pin that on Mikkelson?”

“Well, it didn’t get pinned on Mikkelson, did it?” Wallander spat, violently. He pushed himself up from the table, stood, and paced the room. “Fuck all if there were all of those empty cans of that exact fuel we found buried behind the cabin with Mikkelson’s fingerprints all over them, and the little teeny tiny fact that Mikkelson had access to an easy supply of that shit through his business?”

“You’re still convinced he did it,” I said, crossing my arms over my chest.

“A little too fucking late for that now that he’s dead, isn’t it, Magnus?” Kurt squinted at me. 

I said nothing. 

“I thought so.” Wallander scratched the back of his head, his other hand akimbo upon his hip. “I need a piss. I’ll be back. Don’t do anything idiotic while I’m gone.” With that, Kurt yanked the door open, bolted out, and slammed it shut behind him.

Arsehole.

***

“We find the former owner of this knife, Kurt, I think we find our killer.”

Wallander remained silent for a good five minutes, simply sitting quiet in that conference room long after our colleagues had left on their various errands. 

I stalked around the table, up and back, up and back, up and back, like a trapped jaguar. I couldn’t sit. I couldn’t rest. The energy and panic and terror tore at me and I had to keep moving else I submit entirely to it.

In contrast, Wallander simply eyed the door, smirking, full of ennui and annoyance and self-importance, the old bastard. When he finally spoke it was at a whisper, almost to himself, under his breath.

“She’s guilty, you know.”

I whirled on him. “What? First Noren, then you, Kurt? Noren’s a fucking rookie. I can understand him being an arse about this, but you? This is so beneath you.” 

“I’ve more experience in my little finger than….”

“Fuck your little finger, Wallander.” I pounded on the table. “She’s one of us, Lova is. She’s one of your team, how dare you even think, for a second, that she did this… this thing.”

“Her fingerprints are all over the knife, all over the scene, she was found with her hand wrapped around the murder weapon! Her blood was all over the pavement!”

“So,” I challenged. It just means she was there, not that she did anything!

“She took a god damn runner out of hospital, Magnus, you said so yourself!”

“That means nothing! She’s scared shitless, Kurt! Wouldn’t you be? Besides, she’s been to war! She’s seen horrors we couldn’t even imagine, and her brain,” I pointed at my head, “her brain doesn’t know how to process the shit anymore. She just runs. She shuts down and she runs. It’s what she does!”

Kurt frowned, his brow furrowed, and he stared at me for what seemed an eternity. When he finally spoke again, it was calm, almost a whisper. “She stood to inherit a metric fuckload of money.” He sat forward, elbow on the table. “You may not have noticed it but she likes her nice things. House in one of the best neighborhoods in Ystad, drives a BMW, carries Fendi bags, what else could she want?”

“She’s not like that.” I countered. “She didn’t give a shit about the money, and the bags belonged to her sister before she died!”

“What about the trial, Magnus. I saw her. I know you did, too. She looked like she was ready to jump the bench and strangle Mikkelson right then and there.” Kurt gestured openly, his voice now taking on that annoyingly scholarly tone, as if a teacher talking to an inept pupil. “It’s all so clear.”

Part of me, at that moment, wondered if Kurt was merely testing me. I wondered if he was playing that god damn Socratic game with me that the most arsehole instructors at the academy did. Turnabout, you know? Reverse psychology? 

I wondered if he was playing devil’s advocate with me.

But the other part of me was slowly becoming convinced that Kurt was ready to turn on Lova. 

And I’d have none of it.

“What the fuck is wrong with you, Kurt?” I hissed. “We haven’t even scratched the surface! There’s so much to look into! How can you be so incredibly sure she did it! How can you?” I strode over beside him, bringing myself to my full height and staring him down. “Tell me.”

He stood, looking up at me, squaring his shoulders. “I’m just sure of it.”

“Are you?” the volume and pitch of my voice both increased exponentially. “Are you really, or have you just become lazy arsed in your old age? Are you really that willing to just throw all possibility away and give up on her like that?”

He poked a finger into my chest. “The evidence is all there. Motive, opportunity, method, her running in the face of arrest… It’s all clear!” He splayed his hands and slowly sat back down, as if he were finished with the conversation.

Like hell we were finished. 

I slammed a fist against the wall. “It’s not clear! It’s clear as fucking mud, Kurt! It’s clear as fucking mud and I won’t stop. I won’t stop until we figure out the truth of this!” I paced away and grasped handfuls of my own hair, utterly stunned. “Oh my God! I can’t believe what I’m hearing!” I slumped down into a chair, shaking my head. “I honestly can’t believe I’m hearing this from the great fucking Kurt Wallander. Kurt Wallander, now suddenly willing to just chuck it all in, screw the truth, and sell his colleague – one of our team, someone we love -- up the river because he’s too goddamn lazy to….”

“You’re fucking her, Magnus.” Kurt challenged, interrupting me; his voice laced with quiet fury. His head was bent, eyes studying the fingers in his lap. “You’re fucking her, aren’t you?”

Arsehole! Arsehole. I breathed, heavily through my nose, blinking rapidly. 

I said nothing. I stood and pressed my hand against the wall, pushing all of my body weight into it, as if the wall and the lath and plaster and all that mouldy shit beneath it was holding me up; holding up my entire universe, my entire existence.

“Magnus. Answer me.” Kurt warned. Again with the scolding the petulant child act.

“Yes.” I whirled. “Yes. Happy now?” I took the three steps necessary to bend over and stick my face into that of Kurt’s, almost nose-to-nose, and I let my voice rise and my emotion burst and my frustration boil and I let everything out. 

I laid myself bare in front of the last person I’d want to ever lay myself bare in front of and I didn’t give a shit. “Yes, I’m fucking Lova. I’m also eating her out, Kurt, is that what you want to hear? As much as I can whenever I can. And she? Lova? She gives me goddamn good head, and I love it, and she makes me feel incredible and I’m...oh, God. I’m….” 

I retreated, instantly taken aback by the abject shock and dismay writ large on Wallander’s face. 

“Oh God,” I sniffed. I covered my eyes, holding back the sting, that hateful, fucking burn behind my irises, the tension of the muscles there. There and in my chin, which had begun quivering in earnest. “Oh, God, Kurt.” I fell again into the nearest chair and bent double, one hand dangling between my open legs, the other pawing furiously at the tears suddenly flowing freely from my eyes. I breathed, noisily and rapidly into my hand. I composed myself, then, and looked up at Kurt.

My vision was blurred, control of all of my facial muscles completely lost.

“You’re in love with her.”

I nodded.

“Magnus.” Kurt inhaled and blew his breath back out. He set a fatherly hand on my arm. “Magnus, could you possibly be any more daft?”

Any other time such a question would have insulted me, and I would have lashed out in fury at the old codger. Not this time. 

Because I knew he was right.

“No,” I chuckled once, and bit my lower lip. I scrubbed at my eyes with the back of my hand. “I suppose I can’t.”

Kurt pursed his lips and nodded. “I’ll have to take you off the case, you know.”

My head snapped up. “No. No fucking way. You will not.”

“I have to,” Kurt said, evenly. 

“No.” I stood, tenting my fingers upon the table, leaning forward, elbows locked. “You can’t do that.”

“It’s an open and shut case anyway, Magnus.” Kurt pinched the bridge of his nose. “I can’t have you running around wasting everyone’s time, desperate to clear your girlfriend’s name!”

“She’s not my….”

“I don’t care. Your feelings for her will get in the way of your investigation, and your whole process will just be skewed. You won’t be looking for the truth, you’ll just be looking for a way to keep Lova out of prison.”

I stared at him, incredulously. “Right, just like you… just like you when Linda’s life was at stake, right? You didn’t pull yourself off of that case, did you? You didn’t distance yourself and say, ‘oh, jeez, I can’t work on this because my daughter’s involved’….”

Kurt cut me off. “That,” he pointed, mashing his finger down on the table, “that was different! That was different, and you know it.”

“No it wasn’t!” I bellowed. The whiteboard vibrated against its moorings. Heads turned from outside the glass walls. I quieted. “It was not different. Someone you loved was in danger, someone you loved more than life itself – her life was in serious jeopardy, and you said fuck it all and you went in there and you tried, you tried, you used your position and your power and your ability to do what you could to help her.” 

Kurt stared at me, tears forming in the canthi of his own eyes at the memory of his daughter, knelt on the floor, a gun held to her head by a madman. 

“You did what you could to help her, and what did I do? I fucking supported you, Kurt. I was there, Kurt. I listened, I was there, step by god damn step with you and Jesus Christ, I killed a man for you! I killed a man for her because you….” I pointed a finger at Kurt’s chest, but stopped myself from saying what I was thinking.

It would have only made things worse.

“Because, I what, Magnus?” Kurt said, slowly, dangerously. “Because I what?” He bellowed.

“Fine! Because you couldn’t do it! I had to pull the fucking trigger because you couldn’t do it!” My breath heaved, and my chest felt like it was about to explode. I extended my pointer finger, bringing it up next to my own head, pointing up. I lowered it, slowly, bouncing it in the air. I closed my eyes and shook my head. “You,” my finger bounced again, emphasizing every word. “You owe me, Wallander.”

“I what?” Kurt breathed, fury and rage and regret burning in his eyes. 

“You owe me.” I enunciated my words carefully, slowly. “You owe me this, Kurt. Keep me on the case. Believe me, I know what you’re thinking but there is so much out there we haven’t even tapped yet, and I need the truth here. I can’t just hand Lova over to the prosecutor without at least trying. I can’t.” I placed the flat of my hand against Kurt’s back. “And I know you can’t either.”

Silence. A long, horrible, deathly, painful silence. 

And then: “Fine, Magnus,” Kurt whispered, “fine. You’re in charge of this one.” A noise outside the conference room caught both my and Kurt’s attention. “But you step out of line, or fuck up once, Martinsson, and you’re done, and I mean… done. Are we clear?”

I smiled. “Crystal.”

***

Anne-Brit, as always, was good on her word. Fifteen minutes almost to the second after she’d left the conference room, she was back, Nyberg hot on her heels. Both of them were chattering away with the information they’d gleaned in the last quarter hour. 

I couldn’t help sneaking a glance at Wallander as he took it all in. 

Yes, Kurt, I thought. There’s more to this case than fingerprints, motive, Lova being caught red-handed, and doing a runner.

Or at least I’d hoped there was.

Anne-Brit spoke as she sat down, shuffling a stack of papers in front of her. “I’m still working on all the family and military connections, but so far no one’s coming up with the initials DS. There’s LS, for Lia, and NS for Noel, and those names are consistent across the board on all the records I’ve found. I’m still working on it, Magnus.”

I nodded. “Fine, we’ll put that last on our list.”

I picked up a marking pen and approached the white board. I wrote three things upon it. 

1) “Mobile phone information;”

2) “Financial information;” and

3) “DS?”

Kurt sat back in his chair, crossing his arms over his chest once again, outwardly willing to let me take over the case; inwardly convinced that I’d fuck it up or that I was set upon a folly, a silly chase. I didn’t care. I was in charge, and damn me I’d take it.

“Nyberg,” I pointed the marking pen at him, “tell me about the mobile.”

Nyberg balanced the small, cheap device in his right hand, and a newer model iPhone in his left. He leaned forward in his chair, resting his elbows upon the table. “The phone Magnus found was the one that dialed the 112 call about Mikkleson’s murder. It’s clean of fingerprints, though. The text sent from it was sent exactly one half hour before the 112 call, and the text was sent to this phone,” he lifted the iPhone in his left hand.

“Whose phone is that?” I asked. 

“It’s Johann Mikkleson’s phone. I cross-referenced the mobile number, and it popped right up, so I paid Martianne a visit, and got it out of evidence just a few minutes ago.”

“Did you find the text on it? Was it still on there?”

“Yeah,” Nyberg replied, “it’s interesting, to say the least.”

“Who’s it from?”

Nyberg looked from me, to Kurt, to Anne-Brit, nervously. “Well, the iPhone identifies it by the number only, but the text itself… it says it’s from Lova.”

Shit. One strike against. I shuddered and cleared my throat to cover my reaction.

But Kurt saw it. Damn him.

I composed myself, took a deep breath, and held out my hand. “Let me see that. Show me.” Nyberg scrolled through the messages in the phone, and placed the device in my open palm. I flicked my eyes to Kurt, whose mouth twitched, his throat worked, swallowing. I glared back at him. 

Fuck you, Kurt.

“It’s right here,” Nyberg pointed over my shoulder at the little blue bubble on the screen.

I read the text, silently. My stomach muscles tightened, and my chest hardened, tightening around my heart like a giant, constricting fist. My mouth dried, and I swallowed against it.

“What does it say, Magnus?” Kurt asked.

I read it out loud, fighting against the quiver in my voice. “Uncle Jo, want to see you tonight. Ready to talk. All is forgiven. My house 11:00 pm before I go on shift. Love you. Lova.”

Shit. Not good. Not good at all. I knew it, and obviously from the way he was frowning, Kurt knew it.

I set the phone back down. My eyes burned. Fuck. I took a long breath and blew it back out, calming myself. Okay. Just. Okay… keep going. Keep going. It’s not as bad as you think. Keep going. 

Next step. Logic. Logic. Logic. 

“Did you trace the disposable phone? Do we know who owns it?”

“Yeah,” Nyberg replied, gingerly, sensing my increasing distress. “I uh, well, the best I could do was trace it to a mobile phone store in Stockholm. Östermalm, to be exact.”

I blinked. “Östermalm?” 

“What about it?” Kurt asked.

“I was just there, when I went to interview Noel Sahlberg. My brother lives in that area, but I’m pretty sure Noel does, too.”

Kurt gave me a half smile, his eyes widening. “Looks like you’ll be going back to Stockholm soon.”

Okay, encouraging. Yes. 

I returned the grin. “Looks that way. I’ll get up there tomorrow.” I turned to Anne-Brit. “Did you get anything back from the forensic accountants?”

“Interestingly enough, yes,” Anne held up a single sheaf of paper and set on the table. Nyberg and I stood behind her, each of us setting a hand upon the back of her chair, leaning in. Now, I was never one for spreadsheets and numbers and figures. I always needed such things explained to me like I was a rather stupid school boy, which Anne-Brit knew well of me. Bless her. “Now, they can’t necessarily trace what’s exactly going on here, but some things are certainly… off,” she said, hesitantly. “And they’re not good.”

“Out with it already,” Wallander gestured grandly.

“They think someone could be stealing from the company.”

“Who?” Nyberg asked.

“Not sure, but it’s strange,” Anne replied. 

“What do you mean?”

“I mean that there are bits and bobs that are inaccurate between the company’s internal accounting records, the raw data, and what they report to the government for regulatory stuff on a monthly and quarterly basis. I mean,” Anne-Brit sighed, “I mean, forensic accounting tells me it’s normal for a company to have errors like that, it happens all the time, but this is really odd.”

“Go on,” I encouraged.

“There’s, perhaps a thousand kronor missing from this account, ten thousand from that account, a few hundred from another, and on and on over hundreds and hundreds of line items. The largest discrepancy is from an operating line item of about half a million kronor.”

“So, where’d it go?” Nyberg asked.

Kurt leaned forward in his chair, suddenly interested. 

“Well, here’s the oddest part. SMAB does its own in-house payroll processing, they don’t use anyone like Auldenfire or anything like that. Forensic’s gone through the payroll records and found Lova’s name on the payroll.”

“What?” I spat, blinking rapidly. I straightened up and shoved a hand through my hair. “Since when?”

“Since her grandfather passed away, since the company’s been in Johann Mikkelson’s hands; and the discrepancies I talked about have shown up even more since Noel Sahlberg took over.”

“How much has Lova been paid?” Kurt inquired.

“Total?” Anne-Brit glanced down at the spreadsheet, running her finger across a set of lines. “According to this, she’s been paid the same amount in total that’s gone missing from the other accounts.”

I pushed the side of my index finger into my mouth and bit down, hard. “Which is?”

“About fifteen million kronor.”

“Fuck me,” Nyberg breathed. 

Fuck me, indeed. Another strike.

I stepped around the table, placed my hands upon a chair and let my head fall forward. I turned it to and fro, back and forth, fighting to keep my own emotions at bay. Fighting to keep myself from screaming, to keep my increasing anger and sense of outright doubt at bay. 

I know it was irrational, but I felt betrayed.

Betrayed by the data. Betrayed by Kurt. Betrayed by Lova. And it hurt. Physically. That vise grip around my chest twisted another great notch and it felt as if all of my innards were being pressed up into my throat. I felt sick. I stepped around and let my body fall into the chair, bringing my hand to my face, running my knuckle over my lips, back and forth, back and forth. 

I had to think; but I’d shut off. I’d shut down, just like Lova did. 

I’d shut down until this: Until Kurt placed a hand on my arm. 

I glanced at him. He was looking at Anne-Brit.

“What’s the address on her payroll records?”

“That’s another thing, Kurt,” Anne-Brit frowned, “the money wasn’t direct deposited anywhere, and forensic accounting hasn’t been able to trace it to any of Lova’s bank accounts. In fact, payroll mailed the cheques to an address in Stockholm, not in Ystad; and they were, in turn, exchanged at a Nordea Bank there for cash. Cash every time.”

“Where in Stockholm?” I asked, breathily. “Where?”

“Östermalm.”

***


	6. Part Six

The events of the previous few days and nights had been, for lack of a better word, stressful. Yes, I know. I am the master of the bloody obvious. My job itself, in an every day sort of setting was one that would be prone to cause intermittent bouts of panic and insomnia and hysteria and mild insanity in even the most stoic and solid of people, but what I’d been experiencing of late truly wasn’t every day.

It wasn’t every day the woman you loved was a possible murderer.

It wasn’t every day the woman you loved was missing; nowhere to be found even by the best tracker the Ystad police department had - vanished without a single solitary trace.

It wasn’t every day that the woman you loved – simply didn’t love you back.

Stressful.

Even more so in the middle of the night, sitting in front of my Mac computer, in my very creaky chair, at my very old roll-top desk, in my extremely cluttered, yet utterly organised office. The image on the computer screen cut me to the core, haunted me. 

If the photo had been grittier, harder to discern, maybe it would have been easier. Maybe it would have been easier for me to distance myself from what I was seeing -- but it was as crystal clear and sharp as if I were watching it unfold before me with my own two eyes. 

The scene was lit by harsh, violent, artificial lights; those halogen lamps enhanced by their attached reflector umbrellas that cast a bright, white luminescence over every detail, leaving no trace, leaving no shadow. 

Lova -- my Lova, was draped over the overweight-fit-to-burst-from-his-clothing body of her uncle, Johann Mikkelson. Johann’s tie was still done up around his throat; his jacket still hung from his corpulent shoulders. He looked almost… asleep, save for the fact that his eyes were open in an expression of abject horror, and his entire shirt front was stained a reddish-black. 

Save also for the fact of an immense blade jutting from just beneath his breastbone.

And Lova, seeming to have been clutching her uncle from behind, as if in a loving, warm, almost spooning, playful embrace. Her head and shoulders had fallen limp, like a rag doll, over the hump of his right arm. Her legs were bent, tucked up haphazardly behind his lower back, and her right arm was flung, friendly-like, around his right shoulder.

Her fingers curled in a loose grip around the knife protruding from Johann’s chest.

I tried, desperately, to tear my eyes from the image. I couldn’t.

I didn't want to look at it, but I needed to.

I had to.

I had to study it, to learn it, to burn the image of it into my memory. I had to do this not only for the sake of the case, but moreover, for my own peace of mind; to somehow let the work cure the bouts of panic, the grips of hysteria, the mild insanity. 

The insomnia.

I pushed off from the chair and padded, my bare feet slapping noisly against the hardwood floor, into my bedroom, where the carpet silenced my footsteps. I crossed to the window, unlocked it and pulled it open, letting the cool, crisp night air flood my overheated, stuffy, uncomfortable quarters.

I breathed it in, letting it cover me, letting the fresh air of Ystad envelop me; bathe me, cleanse me and clothe me in something other than the perpetual filth, horror, and hate in which I’d been existing. Existing? Barely. I stripped off my t-shirt and my boxers and let the coolness take the rest of me with it. 

God, I wished it could have simply taken me away. 

God, I wished it could have brought me to Lova; wished it could have just lifted me up, carried me on its gentle currents and taken me to where Lova was. 

Or brought Lova to me.

Jesus, I felt like a love sick idiot. A fool. 

Not felt like, I was, and I knew it.

My thoughts stayed with Lova, pondering on all the sad and scary things that those left behind wonder about those who go away. I thought of her in the mornings, with her hair bristling and her eyes tired and her mouth foul with her words. I thought of her in the office, full of rapier wit and whip smart and the best damn shot on the firing range. I thought of her in the evenings, in bed with me, touching me, kissing me; and the more I thought of it, the more I twitched and stirred where Lova had touched me so often.

I allowed myself the small comfort of drawing my fingers over my lips, imagining them to be Lova’s fingers. I let my head fall back, let my jaw drop, and drew a splayed open hand down my throat. That hand skimmed further down, over my pectoral muscles, twisting lower to my abdomen, to my core. I sobbed, once, and let that hand I’d wished was Lova’s cup and weigh the flesh between my legs, kneading it to life; my distant desires and the sensation of touch bringing blood and a familiar firmness to those particular tissues.

I took my hardened flesh in hand and cried out, burying my teeth into my lower lip, screwing my eyes shut. I braced my other hand against the window frame and curled my spine into myself, my legs set wide apart, toes curling, my knees shaking in double time to the movements of my hand. Back and forth, back and forth, hitch of breath, back and forth, fingers scrabbling at the wood of the window ledge, breaking bits of paint off beneath my fingernails. It hurt, it bled, but I didn’t care.

I worked myself, harder and harder, faster and faster, my breaths coming harsher, moans louder and deeper in my chest. 

And then I stopped. I stopped and I stared. I stared at my hand, my right hand, wrapped around myself and my brain clicked. It engaged, my attention zooming off in a completely different direction. I stood back, quickly, and let myself go. I made a tight fist with that hand and brought it up before my face, into the light, studying it.

“Holy shit.” I wheezed, my lungs having still not caught up with my brain. “Holy shit!”

I whirled and practically ran out of the bedroom, ignorant of my nakedness, back into the office. The computer had gone dormant and I swished my finger over the track pad to wake it back up. When the screen illuminated, I was once again subject to the horrific image of Lova and her deceased uncle. But that’s not what I was looking for, or interested in.

I hunched over the computer, hand braced upon the desk, and I worked my fingers on the track pad, closing in over and over on the image until the ever so tiny part I needed to see came into sharp focus.

Lova’s right hand, clutching the blade, the blade embedded in the old man’s chest. The blade whose grip was facing to the right side of Johann’s body. The blade that Lova had been trained extensively in using, the blade that supposedly would have been an extension of Lova’s hand itself, that she would have only held in one way, with her fingers over the grips.

But there was a problem.

A major problem. 

Yes, the blade’s handle was facing to Johann’s right. But, Lova’s knuckles, those attached to the hand wrapped around the right side of Johann’s body, in turn wrapped around the blade itself… were pointing to Johann’s left side.

I straightened up, studying my right fist once again. I held it up, thumb facing toward upwards me and thrust, forward, an imaginary knife in my hand. I flipped the hand thumb down, doing the same thing backhand. 

Okay, thrusting forward, the knuckles – and therefore, the handle grips -- went to the victim’s right.

Thumb up, imaginary blade toward me. Thumb down, toward me, forehand. I was testing the direction of a hand or a knife grip as if someone had stabbed me from behind.

Both times, the knuckles – and therefore the handle grips -- went to my left.

Stab from the front, to the right. Stab from the back or the side -- to the left.

She was at his back, gripping the blade as if attacking from the back.

But he’d been stabbed from the front, because the grips set toward the right.

Right?

Finally. Something I could use.

I shut the computer, slowly, gently, two-handed, plunging my office into darkness once again. I stared into it, my brain now dragged completely out of its stupour of self-pity and madness; and into a calmer energy, an energy of satisfaction.

An energy, which, I thought, would finally let me sleep.

I allowed myself a smile, just a small one. I looked down at my body, at the hardness, longing, and desire for the absent woman that remained there. My smile broadened, ever so minutely.

Yes, I could sleep, I could finally get some sleep; but there was something rather... gripping... I needed to take care of, first.

***

I left quite early the next morning, arriving in Stockholm shortly before noon. I navigated my way to Ostermalm and left my Volvo in the car park behind my brother’s building, in the parking slot allocated to his more upscale Mercedes. The neighbors knew me, and even liked me, in spite of my bourgeois paycheque and taste in vehicles.

I left my overnight bag in the boot and slung my computer case across my chest. I patted my jacket pocket, finding the poly bag with the small, throwaway phone in it. My first task of the day. 

The Phone House took up a corner of a row of shops along the high street. I entered and started browsing, looking for the match to the phone taking up residence in my jacket. A rather erudite looking salesperson, by the name of Elias according to his name badge, approached me.

“May I help you find anything, sir?”

I dug my wallet out of my pocket, opened it, and showed him my identification as a Ystad Police detective. “Are you the manager?” I asked.

Elias’ eyes flashed from my ID card to my face, back to my ID card. He swallowed, hard. “Ja, sir, I am. How can I help, detective....?”

“Martinsson. Ystad Police. Do you have a few minutes?”

“Do I have a choice, Herr Martinsson?” He tried, desperately, to make his smile look friendly. Obviously, he’d been down this road before with other detectives, probably from Stockholm and many, many other jurisdictions around Sweden.

“Nope,” I matched his grin. 

“Well, then, right this way, sir.” He gestured, turned, and walked toward the back of the store. He turned, quickly and whispered to his colleague, and then led me into the back room. 

I pulled the phone from my pocket and handed it to him. “I need to know who bought this.”

“We don’t keep records of the mobile numbers on this model. It’s a temporary, and the number’s only good for a short time, depending on whether the monthly fee is paid.” He shrugged and tried handing the device back to me.

Oh, no, you little shit. Not getting off that easily.

I pushed it back toward him. “There are other ways,” I said, giving him an exasperated look. “Let’s do this,” I said, condescendingly. “Turn the thing on, tell me when it was activated, and we’ll go from there.”

Elias looked to me for permission, which I gave with a nod, before removing the phone from the poly bag. He activated it, scrolled through some buttons, and looked up at me. “Exactly one week ago today.”

“Do you keep sales records that far back?” I crossed my arm over my chest, stroking my chin with the hand of the other arm. I pointed at him. “Can we cross check those with this model of phone purchased that day?”

He smiled and handed the phone back to me. “That, I can do.” He pulled a chair out for me, and I sat upon it. He took the chair beside, set his glasses upon his nose, and started tapping away on a terminal. He pulled up records from the day the phone was activated, clicked a few boxes, and a list of all purchases of the specific model phone came up.

There were only three.

Excellent.

“Two purchases were made by credit card.” He pointed to the screen. “This one, I remember helping them. It was a mom, a lady named Lindholm, who was buying a phone for her daughter. The kid was going on some sort of hiking trip or something up North. The daughter had a pretty expensive phone otherwise, and mom didn’t want her little girl to lose it, you know?”

“What’s the other one?”

“That,” he squinted at it, “oh yeah. That was a bloke named Falk, bought it by credit card, too. He’d brought his in for repair and needed a temp. He was going to give it to his kid when he was done. I remember him. Big guy, tall, like you, but huge. Built like a cattle truck.”

“How about this third one?” I pointed to the screen. Elias clicked on the hyperlink, and the information came up. That had to be the one. Had to be.

He peered at the screen again, and I looked over his shoulder, trying not to appear too eager. Although I was. Eager, very much so. “Ah, okay,” Elias said. “No information, cash sale.”

“Nothing?” 

“No, all they do is bring the box to the front, we activate the phone, and off they go. If it’s a cash sale, we have no information. It’s kind of designed that way. Since they’re temporary phones, and the sim card deactivates after a certain amount of time, there’s no sense in us or the mobile carrier keeping the information and taking up the data storage.”

Shit.

This couldn’t be a dead-end again, I thought. No way. I didn’t drive my arse all the way up to Stockholm for nothing.

I chewed my bottom lip for a moment, and then squeaked a suck of air through my lips. I sighed, looking around the small room, my brain churning, knuckle tapping against my lips, thinking of any other avenues. Anything. Something. 

I glanced up at the ceiling. 

A small bubble, a camera cover, it’s glass darkened. 

“You’ve survelliance cameras.” I said, quickly.

“Yes,” Elias hesitated, “we do, but....”

“How far back do you keep your security images?” I stood, peering up curiously at the small camera mounted in the ceiling. “How long do you keep your footage?”

“Ten days, max, then everything erases and starts over again,” Elias responded, cluing in to my line of thinking. He moved the mouse rapidly, clicking here and there, exiting out of the sales program and entering into another, apparently designed to store and retrieve security footage. He clicked and scrolled and moved through, reopening the sales program. He wrote down the date and time of the purchase I was interested in, the cash purchase, and brought the mouse pointer to a time entry to match on the surveillance program.

A picture, black and white and grainy, opened on the screen. “Ha!” Elias exclaimed. “There she is.”

Holy fuck. Okay. Now we were getting somewhere. I set a hand on the desktop and leaned over Elias’ shoulder. I let my other hand hover over the mouse. “May I?” 

“Be my guest.” Elias vacated the seat, and I took it, my eyes and my focus never leaving the screen. “Click here and use this slider to go back and forth,” he instructed. “You can use this one on the side here to zoom in and out, and here to switch between cameras.”

“Thanks,” I said, absently. 

I worked the image to just the right angle, the right moment in the time frame, until I was able to get a decent view of the person who’d purchased the phone. The phone itself, in its distinctive bubble packaging box lay on the counter. I saw the woman hand over some bills in cash, and the sales assitant take the cash. 

Then the woman turned around.

Oh my God.

I knew her. I recognised her.

It was Lova but it wasn’t Lova. The woman looked like Lova, very similar to Lova, but the face was off. The nose was thinner. The eyes were bigger. The hair was long and appeared red in the black and white image. The woman’s nails were similarly long and appeared to be red, where Lova’s were blunt and plain.

I started shaking. My jaw hung open. Oh my God. 

Oh my God, the woman... the woman in the image was that... that ginger whore I’d seen in the street outside the bar. The woman who I’d sworn was Lova such that I’d gone after her, called after her, only to lose her again in the Stockholm streets.

I inhaled sharply and jerked my head upward, startling Elias. “I need a printout of this,” I demanded, and then added as an afterthought, “please.”

“My pleasure, Herr Martinsson.”

***

I’d ordered a sandwich at a cafe nearby for lunch, but it sat, untouched on the plate.

I too, sat there, untouched, unmoving, whilst my thoughts stirred and swirled around in my head. I made mental lists, pros and cons and tos and fros and this and that, trying to work out what just happened; what I just saw, and how it fit in with everything else I knew.

I knew the following:

1\. Lova had been found, unconscious, draped over her uncle’s body, covered in his blood.

2\. Lova had been clutching the murder weapon, still embedded in her uncle’s chest.

3\. The approach and angle of the murder weapon, compared to where she was situated was entirely and utterly wrong. The knife was in the wrong position for a stab from the rear of Johann’s body. He had to have been attacked from the front.

4\. The killing stroke was one taught in the military and designed for efficiency and for near instantaneous death. Lova was trained in the military. 

5\. Lova’s fingerprints were all over the murder weapon.

6\. The murder weapon had her initials on it, and was a military-style bayonet knife much like the one Lova herself owned. The murder weapon’s registration numbers had been destroyed, making it untraceable as it was.

7\. But the murder weapon was not the military-style bayonet knife that Lova had owned.

8\. That particular one I found in the boot of her car; and it was registered to her.

9\. The knife Lova had owned had the initials “DS” written upon it.

10\. Thus far, we had no idea who “DS” was.

11\. Lova had no memory whatsoever of what happened on the night of the murder.

12\. Lova had run away, leaving Ystad with no trace. No credit cards, no train tickets, no car rentals, nothing. Her own vehicle was left abandoned in the drive up to her house. Lova had contacted no one, and no one could reach Lova.

13\. With her uncle’s death, Lova stood to inherit a great deal of money, and possibly power and significant control over her family’s rather lucrative business.

14\. Lova had been furious over her uncle’s aquittal from the murder of her sister, Lia. I never shared this with anyone else, but Lova had sworn to me that very day that she would kill him, that she would get her revenge where the justice system could not provide it.

15\. The phone found at the scene was the one that called 112 to report the murder, and was the one that sent a text to the victim, signed Lova, telling him to meet Lova at Lova’s home at the time of the murder.

16\. The woman I’d just seen on the camera image at the mobile phone store, the one who’d purchased that particular phone with cash, was not Lova, but looked one hell of a lot like Lova -- and was the same woman I’d seen near the bar in Ostermalm only a few days prior.

17\. Someone had been moving funds around in a very strange way within the family business, and that certain someone had been funnelling those funds, via payroll cheques, to Lova.

18\. But those cheques weren’t cashed in Ystad, where Lova’d been the whole time. They were mailed to a post box in Ostermalm, and exchanged for cash in Ostermalm. They were exchanged for cash in that bank just across the road where I’d made an appointment with the chief security officer.

There was probably a great deal I’d left out, but yes. It was all so clear, right? 

No, no it wasn’t. Of course it fucking wasn’t. It was clear as the muck on the bottom of the god damn Vassan River, it was. There was too much to balance. Too much for; too much against. Far too much against, in spite of my couple of small victories. 

No, Lova’s small victories.

Working through those facts, I had to put myself in the shoes of the prosecutor. What would the prosecutor do with that information? With the motives, the opportunities, the inconsistencies, the players in this bizarre tragedy?

I knew what the prosecutor would do.

He would throw the book at Lova to the fullest extent of the law. He’d bring her to trial in front of a tribunal, lay her bare in a public forum, in front of her family, in front of her peers, in front of the press; and if he did his job right (which, given his history, I wasn’t sure he could do) Lova would end up imprisoned for a long, long time.

I couldn’t have that.

I needed more information.

The time on my mobile phone told me I had another fifteen minutes before my appointment with the bank’s security officer. I took a few bites of my sandwich, and a few sips of my tea, grabbed my computer bag, and threw a few kronor upon the table. 

I’d be a few mintues early, but the sooner I found out what I needed to know, the better.

***

The bank’s security officer, like the manager of the mobile phone store, had obviously gone down this route before, which made my job a fucks sight easier than I thought it would have been.

I was greeted at the door by one Mr. Mike Beaudry, an American national, and, according to what he told me, a specialist in bank security. The Ostermalm branch of Nordea bank was an immense, spread out facility, ornate in decoration, lavish in style, obviously meant to cater to the heavy industry and the wealthier Stockholm residents who lived and worked in that area. 

Mike gave me a firm handshake when he introduced himself, and addressed me, rather suprisingly politely, as “Herr Detektiv Martinsson.”

“It’s Magnus,” I corrected. “Please, call me Magnus.”

For an American, his Swedish was excellent. Except for the accent, which made communication challenging, but not particularly difficult. Beyond that, Mike was calm and cool, very easy-going and very Swedish in his aspect and personality, for an American.

“I’ve gone and drudged up the info you said you wanted, Magnus.” He touched my shoulder and guided me toward the rear of the bank, to a row of glass and oak-walled offices. “I will admit, your little request there perked my own ears up, given the amount of those cheques that pretty lady was cashing here. I’m surprised none of the front line workers brought them to my attention sooner.”

“Really?” I sat down in the guest chair opposite Mike’s desk. “What are we talking about?”

He pushed a stack of papers in front of me; copies of cheques. “Well, now, they range from a few hundred kronor,” he lifted out one copy, turning it to show me, “to over one million kronor, here.” Another document. 

I picked up the paper and studied it. The particular cheque for one million, seven hundred fifty kronor was made out to Lova Sahlberg, with a post box address in Ostermalm. The back of the cheque was endorsed, “L. Sahlberg.” The date on the document was interesting. It was dated for two weeks earlier, on a date when I knew damn well Lova’d been in Ystad. 

Or, my body knew damn well. 

Yes, it was memorable.

“Who’s been cashing these?” I asked. 

“Good thing you asked, Magnus, my very good friend,” Mike said, congenially. “I happen to have me some surveillance shots right here.” He opened a buff coloured folder and pulled out a set of glossy, black and white photographs. 

At the same time, I reached into my pocket, pulled out, and unfolded the printer paper photo of the woman in the mobile store who’d purchased the phone.

Jesus Christ.

“It’s the same woman.” I observed, aloud.

Mike took the phone store photo from me, and held it up to one of the bank photos. “Sure as shootin’ she is,” he replied. I didn’t quite understand what he meant by ‘sure as shooting’ but I thought he meant an affirmative confirmation of my observations, so I let it slide. 

“Do you know her, have you met her?” I tried to hide how keen I was to know but I couldn’t help myself. I leaned forward in the chair, one arm laid across my knee, the other perched upon the edge of the man’s desk. 

“Never met her myself, like, but I see her in here all the time with one of our best customers. They come in togehter, she cashes her cheques, and they go a’skitterin’ back out.” He leaned back, bringing his cupped hand to his chin in thought. “Come to think on it,” he extended his pointer finger, “I’ve seen her, that particular lovely lady, come in with him once or twice some other times, too; like when he comes in to meet with the bank president every month.”

“Who is it?”

“Here,” Mike showed me another surveillance image. He pointed to a man in the photo, stood beside, arm around the waist of the mysterious ginger whore I’d kept seeing over and over and over again. The man in the photo was dark, swarthy, slim of build, broad of shoulder, well-dressed, and incredibly good looking. And I knew him. “Why, it’s none other than Noel Sahlberg, of course.”

***

I left the bank with my computer bag newly laden with photographs, bank transaction records, and cheque copies that I knew would be of great interest to the forensic accounting nerds back in Ystad. Mike had also provided me with an email full of pdf copies of the same, that I immediately forwarded to Anne-Brit.

I instructed Anne-Brit to put an all points bulletin out for the woman in the photograph.

And to, please, please, please, get me a detetntion and questioning warrant for Noel Sahlberg.

The slimy fuck.

Somehow I knew he’d be involved in all of this shit. 

I walked the rest of the way to Ansgar’s flat, stopped at another cafe and purchased a small meal to go, and stopped again at my Volvo to fetch my overnight bag and my iPad. By the time I’d finished all of my work that day, it was late in the afternoon. After a six hour drive, and an afternoon’s worth of, can I say, rather startling revelations, I was exhausted. 

I entered the key code in the front door of Ansgar’s building, pulled the door open, and gathered up my brother’s post from the floor. I trudged up the steps, my feet shuffling noisily upon the rubber runners, scuffling and schussing. I reached Ansgar’s landing, dropped my bag, and fished for my key fob out of my jacket pocket.

I fumbled with the keys. Strange, but Ansgar’s key wasn’t there. It was usually tucked, rather comfortably, between my flat key and my car’s key fob, but it wasn’t there. The gold, squared-off key with the triangular cut outs wasn’t there.

“Oh, what the fuck.” I cursed. I dropped my computer bag and meal sack, and grasped the key chain two handed, going through the keys one by one. Not there.

I exhaled a heavy breath, groaned, and rolled my eyes to the ceiling, letting my hands drop beside me in abject annoyance. “Shit, where’d it go?”

On a strange whim, I grasped the door handle.

It turned.

The door opened.

I immediately threw my keys to the ground and unholstered my gun. Shit, not this again. Not this again.

I used my foot to gently push the door open. It creaked, damn the thing, and I raised the barrel of my gun. I took one step into Ansgar’s foyer, heel to toe, quietly, slowly, and shuffled my other foot behind. Another step, another quiet shuffle. 

I let the door float the rest of the way ajar upon its hinges, and stepped again, keeping my gun aimed forward through the narrow corridor. I inhaled, exhaled, and turned to the right, to make my way in and search Ansgar’s sitting room when there was a crash, a breath, two footsteps, and a whisp of air across my face.

Followed in very quick succession by an impact, a cracking of bone, and an instantaneous bloom of white, hot pain across my left cheek. I doubled over with it; and there came another impact, another crack, this time of two bones, and another intense bolt of agony that sprang from the tips of the fingers of my right hand, shooting all the way up to my right shoulder. 

God damn it! My gun skittered across the marble floor to the other side of the entry, near the kitchen. I scrabbled after it, nearly tripping myself in the process. My head felt fit to explode, pressure exponential with the pain. I felt my eye start to swell shut and my hand fell limp and utterly immobile at the wrist. 

I was kicked again, this time behind the knee, and I crumpled to the floor, the intense, sharp trifecta of torment rendering me completely immotile. 

I screamed against the pain, lifting my head from the floor and wailing into the empty hallway. 

Only, it wasn’t empty.

I looked up, my eyes streaming with tears, my facial muscles invountarily contorted, but I could see, I could see one person and one person alone.

The ginger whore. The ginger whore with Lova’s face that wasn’t Lova.

"Wh... who...who the hell...are you?" I stuttered.

She didnt answer. Intead, she grinned at me, a wicked, horrific, mask of a grin that didn’t seem like it would ever reach her eyes. She bent down, grasped me by the hair and pulled my face to hers. The woman, the ginger whore, looked me over, her eyes roving here and there, to and fro over my face and my rapidly closing left eye. 

“Oh, tsk,” she said, “now that won’t do.” She tore at my hair again, and I cried out. She let her eyes fall to my lips, showed me her teeth in a lacivious, disgusting smile, and pushed forward, latching her lips on to mine. She kissed me, licking at the blood from my split lip. I fought against her, biting and spitting, and turning my head as much as I could in the state I was in; but she just laughed. 

She just laughed and she’d rendered me helpless.

Fuck.

She pulled my head up by the hair once more, slowly, consideringly, and then with a sudden, violent movement she yanked me back, and slammed me without mercy, forehead first, upon the hard, unyielding, white marble floor. 

There was a burst of white light, and then, darkness. Silence. Silence without thought, silence without knowledge.

As if my world no longer existed.

***


	7. Part Seven

The darkness, the unconscious state of mind -- was quite like sleep, but deeper than sleep, and I’d actually welcomed it. It was like swimming, really. The darkness was sweet, like being in a darkened, room, floating naked in a warm, comforting salt bath. There was no sound, no sensation, no light, nothingness; almost an embrace, a mother’s hug, womb-like, living there unaware of the outside world, within my own blank slate of a mind.

I was happy there.

Because I knew what was waiting for me on the other side.

 

Therefore, the awakening from such a state was far worse than simply arising from slumber in the morning. The awakening was like an irritating trickle of cold water in the bath; like a foul scent in a flower garden; like a scratch upon skin. Like rousing from a hangover. 

No. That? It was worse. The feelilng... it didn’t even compare to a hangover, and I’d had many of those.

Sound was the first outside world intruder into my little bit of heaven. Sound alone rang through my head, pounding itself in before kinetic sense, before smell, before movement, before vision, before pain. Thank God, before pain. 

Footsteps. Movement. The noise of horns and cars and sirens outside. Two voices penetrated upon that barrage of sound. 

There was a deep, tonal male voice: “Did you see what was in his bag? They’re on to us! It’s finished, doll. Over. We’re done.”

And a smooth, lyrical female: “We are not done.”

The man spoke again. “The photos? The phone store stuff? You can’t tell me he hasn’t sent that shit in already. I’ll guarantee you he has, and when his colleagues, especially that Wallander guy, get hold of that shit, we’re fucking done!”

And the woman said: “You’re done, you mean. You. Not me. You.”

The voices lapsed into silence. And with nothing else to grasp at, my brain shifted its attention back to myself. 

Breaking through into the rest of my consciousness wasn’t a jarring sensation. Rather it was quite like a swim up from a darkened, oceanic depth. Yes, like swimming again, like rising from the cold, murky water after a deep sea dive, a deep sea dive without scuba gear; daring to go it with bare lungs. From the burn of it in my chest, the dizziness and nausea upon surfacing, I would swear I caught a severe case of the bends on the way up.

Oh. Jesus Christ, the pain.

Not knowing where I was or who the voices were, I fought against the instinct for movement. I struggled not to give my regained awareness away, even though I wanted nothing more than to clutch at my arm, pound on my thigh, put my head between my knees and scream my guts out.

It took everything I had not to; not to moan against the crushing pressure, the pulsing and stabbing sensation over the whole side of my face, the throbbing ache in my head, and worse, the crippling burn in my right wrist. This was exacerbated by the vice-like grip of whatever had bound my hands behind my back. The flesh had swollen, and the metal… as I’d realised it was my own handcuffs encircling my wrists… bit into it, cutting off circulation, causing a horrifying pins and needles sensation down my fattened fingers. 

I tried making a fist, but my hand wouldn’t cooperate. 

The voices, when I’d heard them, sounded distant, as if coming from another room. I took a chance and opened my eyes. Well, my eye. One eye was swollen shut, tortuously painful in and of itself, and incredibly difficult even to move the eyeball around in its shattered socket. 

I kept my head bent and breathed, quietly, willing my lungs to fill and empty slowly, without panting, choking back the pure panic that crept up within me. I looked down, out of that one eye, and saw my legs, sat upon one of Ansgar’s dining chairs, bent at the knee, the feet tied to the chair legs with two of my brother’s best Armani silk ties. 

Shit, I thought, he’ll be pissed off as hell about that.

I was in Ansgar’s sitting room, from the look of the plush, white carpeting beneath my feet. White carpeting that had become stained red with blood at my feet.

My blood. My god damn blood and, screw Ansgar’s ties, I was pissed off about that. I’d been sucker punched, and beat to shit, and I don’t fucking ever get sucker punched. Ever. I should have known better. I should have known better, but I’d let my guard slip.

I was ashamed; embarrassed and humbled by my own stupidity. My ire started rising, the anger brewing deep inside my stomach, threatening to churn itself along with the bile and the remains of my lunch and lurch, uncontrolled, upward. I couldn’t have that. I swallowed against the nausea, making myself breathe again. Calming myself.

The voices started up again, and I stilled. Footsteps -- heels clicked and loafers slapped across the marble hallway, from the library, into the sitting room where I was. I let my head droop to my chest, choking back a gasp at the stab of pain that shot through my entire body at even that minute movement. 

“I can’t do this anymore,” the male voice said. “This? This is too much. There can’t be another death because of this, there just can’t. One was enough. I won’t have it.”

“You won’t have it,” the woman repeated, her tone dark, threatening. “You have no say in any of this, Noel, darling. None.”

Noel. Noel Sahlberg? What the fuck was he doing in my brother’s flat?

And more importantly, who was the woman?

What the fuck was she doing in my brother’s flat?

“I can stop the money, you know,” Noel said, rapidly, breathily. “I’ll put a stop to all of it. No more trips to the bank. No more cheques. You’ll be broke. You can’t work, you know you can’t get a job, and you’ll be right back where you started. You can’t live if you have nothing, and what you have is only what I’ve given to you.”

“Well, then you’ll just have to have nothing, too.”

“Is that a threat?”

“You know damn well that it is.” I could almost hear the sneer in her voice. “I own you.”

“You own me,” Noel said, incredulously. “You own... me.”

“I own you. I own your loyalty, your money, and if you keep pushing me, I’ll own your house, your car, your fucking dog, and the rest of your god damn life!” The woman bellowed, her voice raising to a shrill of hysteria. “I’ve owned you since the first day you took over that company; from the first kronor that you dared to steal for your pathetic self as soon as you could get your grubby little hands in the fucking till! I've owned you since I caught you. I caught you stealing all that time ago."

"And you've never let me forget it, have you?" Noel screamed, his voice shaking.

"No, and I never will. Why should I? As long as you keep paying me, as long as you keep helping me, I won't turn you in, simple as that. It's our deal. You know our deal, darling Noel. Beautiful, beautiful Noel. So,” her voice quieted, an eerie calm falling over it, “unless you want to spend the rest of your natural life in prison, you will do as I say.”

“It’s too late for that, isn’t it,” Noel said, quietly, his tone resigned, sad. “It’s too late. The police in Ystad, they already know.”

“Do as I say, and it won’t matter.”

***

I must have blacked out again. I wasn’t surprised that I did. It was exhausting, testing my mettle and my discipline, all the fighting. 

I had been fighting to keep my body and my mind still in the wake of wave up on wave of crashing pain. I’d been fighting against the abject need to tug and wriggle myself free from my bonds in spite of that pain. I’d been fighting against the nearly uncontrollable instinct of the lungs and the vocal cords to give involuntary and unquestionably loud expression to that extremely unpleasant sensation.

I’d been fighting to stay quiet, and in doing so, stressed myself to the point of collapse back into that delicious darkness.

That time, when I came to again, it was because of, not in spite of, the pain. That time, the torment had been amplified by a factor of God knows how much, and that time, my body betrayed me, leaving me no choice but to physically and vocally reveal my new found consciousness.

“Aaah! Fuck!” My head snapped up, and my eye flew open of its own accord. I found myself staring into the face of that red-headed woman. That bitch who beat the shit out of me. I huffed a breath through my nose and my lip curled with hate. I burned with it. Fuck the pain, what hurt was the hate. Pure, unadulterated hate. 

And I didn’t even know who she was, or why she was there.

And she just smiled at me. Just smiled. 

Oh yes, that hate? That base abhorrence, the loathing I’d felt? I was more than sure it would only get worse as the whole disgusting scene played itself out.

She let her fingertip ghost over my mouth, pulling my bottom lip down. Her eyes, hard and gray as steel, focused and fixated upon my clenched teeth, my jaw jut forward as much as the pain would allow. 

She stepped forward over me, sighed, and hitched her skirt up, straddling herself down upon my lap, her legs splayed wide upon mine. If I’d looked down I could see her bare sex and the thought of it made me retch a little. I swallowed, releasing and exhaling my nausea upon a shaky breath. “Ahh…ah, no. No,” was all I could say.

She grinned again and moved her hips on me. She leaned forward, set her hands on my shoulders and pressed her chest against mine. I hissed, as the impact and weight of her body jarred and reawakened every single injury I had, throwing my muscles into tense paroxysms, crushing and twisting against broken bones, bruised flesh, and torn ligaments. 

Enough holding back. Enough. I threw my head back and screamed, the sound of it bouncing off the ceiling and echoing throughout the room, only to be absorbed by the carpet below. My breath, when it did come, came in laboured gasps; tears flooded my one good eye, completely blurring whatever vision I had left.

Once I settled, she spoke. “He’s gone,” she whispered, her breath tickling my right ear. I hitched my shoulder against her, and my chest heaved, air caught in my lungs. Her hand worked at the buttons on my shirt, unfastening them, one by one, and I was powerless to stop her. I was tempted to turn my head and bite her, but I knew the punishment for that would be swift and severe. “Noel. He went to find her and bring her back here. If he can’t finish the job, I’ll have to. The fucking pussy.” 

She exhaled a deliberate breath against the skin of my neck and I shivered, once again awakening all of the damaged nerves in my body. “Aahh. Find… find… who?” I managed, my words slurred, sounding distant and muffled in my own ears. “Find… who?”

“Lova, of course,” she licked the shell of my ear. Damn her. I squinted, and the movements made my head throb. “Hurts?” The woman brushed her fingers over the left side of my face, over my damaged eye and cheek. 

I wanted to tell her no, to fuck off, but once again, my body was my Judas. “Y… yes, ah! Hurts.”

“Good.” She twisted her hand with a sudden motion, grasping my face between her four fingers and her thumb. She squeezed, hard, and I yelped, like a fucking puppy. My broken facial bones shifted under her fingers, crepitating beneath my skin, and I hissed with the torture of it. She crushed me again, smiling. “Good.”

“Oh, God.” I breathed, my voice a high-pitch whine. “Please, aah!” I despised myself. I despised her. “Please. Don’t… don’t.”

“Don’t worry, darling,” she cooed, wiping my tears away, tilting her head this way and that in a mockery of a gentle, loving mother. She caressed my mangled face once again, her fingertips cold and hard against my inflamed, fevered skin. “Lova will be back soon and it will all be over.” 

“Why… why. What? Lova?” Damn it. My breathing wouldn’t settle.

“Shhhh,” she tipped her chin up and eyed me down her nose. She brought her fingers to my lips and pressed, like a lover would touch her excited partner. She turned her hand and touched her own mouth, and I noticed, I noticed the tip of her middle finger, from the top knuckle up, was missing. 

“Who…fuck!” I squeezed my eyes shut, feeling my mind go black again, seeing darkness crowd the outside of my vision. I shook it off. I’d be damned if I’d lose it again with this bitch straddling my cock. “Who…?”

She cocked her head and pouted. “He tried to have me committed, you know,” she whined, “said it was the best for me, said I couldn’t deal, couldn’t take care of myself without help.” Her eyes met mine and hardened, her hands working below to free my now opened shirt from my jeans. “He said I’d be a danger to others.”

I swallowed, unable to control the tremours at the violation – the rape. I swallowed again, my mouth gone dry and my throat numb. I’d lost my voice. I couldn’t speak. 

“He said I had a… nervous breakdown,” she whispered, her tone mocking. She swirled her finger in the small hairs on my chest, tracing a line down my abdomen to where it met my belt. Her eyes followed, lasciviously, and I shuddered. “He had me declared incompetent. I had to go before the court, tell them everything they wanted to know, and they asked oh, so many questions of me. So many doctors, so many lawyers, and they took everything from me. My money, my property, my job….”

She moved off of me, the shift in her weight again torturing every single raw nerve I had. She turned her hand, curled her fingers into the waistband of my jeans and pressed the heel of her hand down, down to that place between my legs. I squirmed, ignoring the pain, desperate to close my legs -- but I couldn’t, being bound at the ankle against the chair. I moved, and my damaged knee howled in protest. And so did I. “Jesus…Jes…Jesus Christ!”

“He did things to me, you know, just like this,” she squeezed my testicles, and I bucked off the chair, a hateful, crackling growl rent from deep within my chest. “Just like this... and worse, and more, and he said he’d ruin me, he’d lock me up and throw away the key if I didn’t let him touch me, if I ever tried to stop him, if I ever reported him, if I ever left him, the fat, perverted old bastard.”

“Who… who…why… why are you telling… me… me this?” I croaked. 

“Because I can,” she replied. “Because you deserve an explanation, don’t you think?”

“For… for what?”

“For all of it,” she stepped behind me, thankfully away from my now throbbing crotch. She placed a light hand upon my shoulder. I shivered. I could feel the weight of her hand shift behind me as she bent, leaning against me, pressing her breasts against my back, her other hand down over my chest. 

She pulled upwards, raking her fingers over my skin, a nail dragging over a sensitive nipple, digging in deep for emphasis on her words. “I wanted him to suffer as much as I did,” she said, sotto voce. “I wanted a trial. I wanted him to suffer the humiliation, the public scrutiny, I wanted him laid bare, flayed open for the world to see; all of his money, all of his power, stripped, all of his fucking perversions out in the open. I wanted him brought low, the lowest he could go.” 

She stepped back and came around to my side. She crouched down on bent knees and gripped my thigh, squeezing the inside of it in long, languid waves, higher and higher. 

And fuck me but my body betrayed me. My body responded, hardening to her touch. Angered, I wriggled against her, only to be rewarded by another body-wide lightning shock of pain. “Fuck!” I screamed, flailing now against my bonds, pain or no pain. “Fucking stop this!”

“No!” She bellowed. She stood, quickly and grabbed me by the hair. She pulled, hard.

“Ah, shit! You bitch!” I’d finally found my voice, and fuck if I wasn’t going to use it. “Let me go!”

“Listen!” She shook my head like that of a rag doll, sending a crash of blinding white agony behind my eyes as my brain shifted around my already injured skull. I nearly lost consciousness again, but she’d have none of it. She wouldn’t let me. She slapped me, hard, across my unhurt cheek. “You will listen.”

My head flopped, listlessly, to the side. I groaned, struggling to lift it back up.

She did it for me; again by the hair.

“He should have gone away forever,” she whispered, brushing my curls back off my forehead. “He should have, but he didn’t.”

“You… you failed.” 

“No,” she shook me again. “You failed. This is your fault. All your fault. You and your fucking incompetent arsed police, and that fucking Wallander. He failed. The prosecutor failed. Those asinine, ignorant judges failed. Everything was perfect!” She screamed. She released my head with a shove, balling her fists at her side. 

She stomped her foot and I felt the reverberations through my damaged flesh. “Everything was perfect -- and he should have paid for what he did to me. He killed me, you know, he did. He killed me, murdered me on a daily basis with what he did to me, how he violated me. Why shouldn't he have been sent away for the real thing? It was poetic. It was perfect.”

“Per… perfect?” If I’d have been in my right mind, I think I would have understood. But I didn’t. I couldn’t. I wanted to. I struggled to.

“Perfect, you shit. We had everything set up. Everything. The fuel cans, the cottage, the car down the lane, everything.” She held her hand open in front of my face, and I flinched. “I even cut off a piece of my god damn finger for it! Look! Look, I gave flesh! I gave flesh and bone and blood and everything was perfect and it should have worked.”

“You…” I blinked, feeling the pull of the darkness once again. I fought against it. I needed to hear what she had to say. I prayed I’d remember it. I needed to comprehend. I pushed and pushed and pushed myself into the light, forcing myself to stay there, to stay present. I even twisted my own wrist against the handcuffs… to purposefully cause pain… just to stay awake. “You…aah…oh, God.”

“The hair was easy,” she said, quietly. “The blood was easy, the finger, not so easy. The fire was too easy. I watched it burn. It was beautiful. Like a holiday firework show, or a midwinter bonfire. It was warm, so very warm, and I watched the place burn, and I thought of that fucking pervert Johann burning, and then I ran. It was cold, you know. So incredibly cold, there in the snow by the seaside, all alone, but I ran, and I ran and I ran.”

"No," I muttered, "Not... not...."

"And yet, Johann went free. Just like that." She snapped her fingers. "He fucking abused me. Took advantage of me. Murdered me. He murdered me over and over and over and yet, he went free."

“You… you’re not. You… you can’t be.” 

“But I am,” the woman replied, calmly. “I am.”

My eyesight blurred and dimmed again, the edges of my peripheral vision (what there was of it) faded, the field of it getting smaller and smaller, blackening along the edges. My head felt suddenly heavy and full; my forehead throbbed. I felt hot, feverish, and all sound seemed muffled, distant, and my ears became fit to burst with pressure. I could fight it no longer.

But... before I let myself succumb one more time, I raised my head, peered at the woman, and acknowledged her for who she was. 

“Lia.”

***


	8. Part Eight

“Where the hell is Lova?” The voice was shrill, shrieking, like a train whistle, and the screech of words whipped me once again out of my stupour. My head bobbled on my shoulders, and my one good eye blinked rapidly as I rose, yet again, back into consciousness. 

I scrunched up my face and groaned on an exhale, my head feeling twice its size, my forehead throbbing against my skin, like a bag full of cats, pawing and pouncing, clawing just to get to freedom. On instinct, I moved my hand to cradle my head, only to rediscover that I’d been bound by my own handcuffs, my hands tied behind my back. 

Fuck.

And here I’d thought I was just in the middle of another lucid nightmare.

“I don’t know!” came and equally powerful, equally head-splitting male voice. Noel. 

“What do you mean you don’t know? You were supposed to bring her here. You said she was going to meet you here, today. You said… you said,” the woman, who I suddenly remembered was the heretofore dead Lia … her voice raised another octave and at least another ten decibels, the vibrations of it ripping through my skull, “you said she trusted you. You said she’d go wherever you told her to go, and that she’d do whatever you told her to do.”

“She told me she would!” Noel protested. “She came my office looking for my help. She brought me back here, told me to wait, gave me the key. She said she’d meet me, that she'd meet me back here. She left, she said she needed to go to Uppsala, and that she'd be back! That's when I phoned you, Lia. What the hell else do you want me to do, go out there and scour the whole county for her?”

“Yes.” Lia snapped. “Damn right I do. Why the fuck else did we bother with all of this? Why the fuck did you bother to even phone me in the first place? What good is everything we've done and everything we've planned to us if Lova is still....”

"Shhhh!" Noel hissed. "Shut up, Lia!"

I chanced a glance up. I moaned again. The pain throughout my body had morphed from a sharp sting upon every movement to a constant, dull ache. No position, no matter how I sat, or how I moved, or what I did, nothing was comfortable. I needed a piss. I was hungry. My stomach protested loudly. I was thirsty. My tongue stuck to the roof of my mouth, and when I did manage to stick it out to lick my lips, those felt desert dry, split, and painful. 

I let my eye roam the room. I could barely focus, but what I made out was this. The bay window had turned black, the darkness sprinkled here and there with the lights of Ostermalm; the green and white of a Starbucks Coffee place across the road, the red and blue of a café sign, the lights of a traffic control. 

I suddenly longed to be out there. Out of this place. Into that darkness, into those lights.

I felt sick.

I heard the shuffle of footsteps across plush carpet, and some heavy, worried breaths. 

“Listen, Lia," Noel said, "I don’t... I don't like this anymore. I can’t do it. I can’t. It's not going to work, can't you see that? It's all gone to shit, all of it."

"You'll go to prison if you don't help me finish this." Lia warned, her tone sing-song, like a child's taunting.

"Frankly, I don't really give a fuck what happens to me now, I can’t do this anymore.”

“Yes you fucking well can, and you will!”

“I won’t kill Lova! I will not!” Noel’s words exploded from his mouth, reverberating around the room, almost echoing through my own mind. Kill Lova. 

They'd been planning to kill Lova. Noel and Lia. I sussed it out rather quickly and the very thought of it chilled me to the bone. Lova'd trusted Noel, sought out his help. Help which, on the surface, Noel gladly gave.

Only there was something else. Lova had brought Noel back here. She'd stolen my key in Ystad on that last night we were together, the crafty little minx; and she'd brought him back here. Then she'd gone on some unknown errand to Uppsala and told him to wait here.

And he phoned Lia. 

And Lia came, and I, my arrival, it was all just a glitch in their plan. I was collateral damage. A blip in their system.

A major blip.

And Lia was there, with Noel, and they were both essentially lying in wait, to spring the trap, to, as they said, finish the job. 

To kill Lova. But why?

Every muscle in my body tensed, and my instincts kicked in. Everything I was in that moment wanted to escape. To do whatever I could to prevent what they were planning; what Noel was now protesting against. I had to. 

I tugged and wriggled against my bonds, fuck all to the pain, and I groaned and grunted. Speech came difficult with my swollen lips and tongue, but I wanted to make myself known.

I wanted to let them know I was listening; to let them know I'd stop them.

Somehow. 

But Lia just ignored me. “You will find her,” Lia said to Noel, calmly, quietly. She placed her hand on Noel’s shoulder, putting all of her focus upon him. “You will go out there. You will find her. You will bring her back here." 

"What if... what if she won't come? If she's not here now, what makes you think she'll come? Maybe she's...."

Lia cut him off with a raised hand. "Well, darling Noel, if she won't come, you will do whatever you can to make her come back here, do you understand me?"

"Lia, I...."

"And when you get her back here, you will take Martinsson’s gun,” she looked up at me, then, and I struggled against my bonds again. She threw her head back and laughed. “You will take Martinsson’s gun, you will shoot her, kill her, and leave her here. You will let this jack ass,” indicating me, the bitch, “watch her die, and you will let him take the rap for it.”

“Oh, God. Lia.” Noel gulped. 

She patted him on the back, grinning. “That’s my boy.” She lifted her chin in my direction. “Check him.” 

Then she was gone.

“Check what?” Noel asked, as if he’d forgotten I was even there. “Oh, yes.” He crossed the living room over to me. I looked up at him, noticing that he’d changed his clothes, and I’d wondered just how long I’d been there. Could it really have been more than a day? No wonder Lia was so uptight about Lova not coming back. 

He stood over me, shifting back and forth on his feet, nibbling on his bottom lip, wringing his hands, obviously not knowing what to do with me. 

First things first. “Thirsty,” I croaked, “water… please.”

He nodded, patted me on the shoulder, and picked up a bottle of water from the dining room table. He held it to my lips. 

The water was stale and warm, but holy fuck did it taste good. I drank, heartily, quickly. Too quickly. I tried to swallow but the liquid bubbled over my lips, down my chin, and the rest of it went the other way, down the wrong pipe. I coughed, spat, and choked. Noel smacked me on the back, sending waves of agony down my arm, into my damaged hand. “Oh, God!” I cried, wheezing, coughing, grimacing and tilting my head back against the pain. “Aah!”

“Sorry! Sorry, sorry, sorry! Oh, God, I'm so sorry.” Noel raised his hands and backed away. 

I glared at him, sputtering, gagging, and huffing air through my mouth, trying desperately to catch my breath, to force the liquid out of my trachea. I coughed again, sending me into another, thankfully short-lived paroxysm. 

In spite of all that, I begged, “More." 

“You sure?”

I nodded. He put the bottle to my mouth again, and I drank more carefully, the water coating the desert inside my mouth, bringing cool, ambrosia-like moisture to my dried out, heated tissues. I tipped my head back and swallowed, snaking my tongue out to wet my parched lips. “Thank…thank you,” I panted.

Noel knelt beside me, craning his neck to look behind. “Your hand, Magnus. It... it looks bad.”

“I’m sure… I’m sure it does. It… feels…like shit.”

Noel turned on his knees and peered into the kitchen, checking to see if Lia was watching, I'd guessed. Satisfied, he turned back. “I’m… I’m going to touch you, okay?” 

I turned my head to look, only to be stopped by a sudden, intense headache. “W…oh, fuck… why?”

Without answering, Noel moved behind me. There was a touch on my left arm, a click, another click, and my right hand swung free to my side. It hit the chair, and I felt my bones crunch together inside the case of my skin. “Aaaaah! Oh my God!” I screamed through gritted teeth. “Fuck!” 

“Sssssh!” Noel hushed me. “Please, shhhh! Shut up!”

I looked down at my hand. It was unrecognisable as a hand, actually. It looked more like one of those purple nitrile surgical gloves. One of those nitrile gloves that had been filled with water and left to hang as a prank over a closed door; destined to fall and splat a glove full of wet upon its unsuspecting victim. 

Despite my rather fanciful imagination, in reality, my limb looked sick, swollen, mottled, and feverish. It didn't look like mine. Like it was some sort of children's toy. Like it wasn't attached to my body. 

Only it was. Unfortunately.

I tested my hand, trying a wiggle of my fingers, and at that moment Almighty Thor the god of fucking thunder decided to punish me with a crack of lightning through my oh, so sinful flesh. “Ahh!”

“We need to get you out of here,” Noel whispered, examining my mangled face, "you're fucked up pretty bad. You need a hospital."

“No shit, Sherlock.” I replied, releasing a small moan. Noel smiled, himself letting a single chuckle bubble up from his chest. 

“Don’t talk to him!” Lia hissed, sharply. She'd come in from the kitchen or wherever she was, and she stood, her arm braced against the arch of the living room entrance. She pointed a finger at Noel. “Don’t fucking talk to Martinsson, say nothing to him, and for God's sake, don’t let him talk to you.”

Noel looked up at me and rolled his eyes. “Okay, Lia! Fine, Lia!” He called out. 

Heels on marble. She'd left again.

Noel sighed and drew a hand down his face, taking a long draw of breath through his cupped fingers. He looked down at the ties binding my feet. Then at me. Then at my feet. He peered at me again, pursed his lips, and I could almost see an idea… some idea, I had no clue what, pop into his head, seemingly fully formed. 

He bent down again, grasped the ties, and moved his hands, making a show in a strange dance of twisty motion over my ankles. He made this hand movement and that arm movement, here and there, as if tightening the binds there -- as if knotting the thousand kronor bits of Italian silk tighter around my legs. He even jerked hard on the ends once, twice, three times, making little grunting noises with the alleged effort. 

Yet, I looked down at my right leg and kicked it out a little bit. Then a little bit more, and a little bit more. Noel laid a hand upon it to stop me moving any further, the signal from his eye contact apparent.

My leg. It was free. I could move, and if I had tried very hard, I could probably have stood on it, if my knees would cooperate. I could stand up. Stand up. 

My hands were free; and I could stand up.

The arsehole was letting me go. Unleashing me. Cutting me loose. I looked down at my ankle again and then back at Noel. I quirked my only movable eyebrow and squinted, as if to say,

“What the hell are you doing?”

And he winked at me, his eyes blazing with determination behind it. He winked at me, and nodded once, terse, as if to say,

“My friend, we’re gonna kick Lia’s fucking arse.”

***

Lia came back, yet again, into the living room from the kitchen, and I immediately returned my hand to its original position behind my back. She didn’t even look. Good. I had no idea what Noel had planned, or when it would go down, but I was more than thankful to suddenly have him on my side. Against his sister, against Lia, against the woman who would kill Lova.

My Lova.

No, I couldn’t have that. I wouldn’t have that. 

“I... I know you did it,” I stuttered. 

“What do you know?” Lia broke away from her brother and approached me, crouching down in front of me. God, I’d hoped Noel’s false knots were convincing enough. “Tell me what you know.”

“Lova… Lova didn’t kill Johann… Johann Mik… Mikkelson.”

Lia cocked a half smile and tilted her head. “Oh, you know that do you?”

“I… I do.” I licked my lips. Damn me but I was getting thirsty again. My stomach flipped, desperate for food, and I swallowed hard to calm my wame. “I do.”

She broke a wide smile and threw her head back, laughing. “Took you long enough to figure it out, didn't it? What was it? The phone? I was so pissed off when I dropped that thing. So pissed off.”

“Wh… why?” I muttered.

“Simple,” she drew her hand over my face and I flinched away. “It’s all a matter of the law of inheritances.” Lia stood and paced away. “With your absolute fucking failure to keep Johann in prison where he belonged, he needed to go some other way.”

Noel sat down on the couch, perching himself on the edge. He’d heard all this before.

“When grandfather died, everything went to Johann, and it shouldn’t have because… he didn’t deserve it. He didn’t deserve it, because of what he did to me -- and someone had to take it from him. With Johann dead, everything went to Lova. Looooovaaaaa,” she mocked, “Lova got everything. Everything!” She was shouting again now, ranting and raving, and pacing around my brother’s living room. Surreal. 

“I never intended to kill Lova, at first, you know. Only to get her out of the way. I loved her. I never wanted her dead. I just... I just wanted her moved aside," she made a graceful, two-handed shoving gesture, like a dance. "She’d go to prison, she’d be put away.”

“But… but… you were dead. How could you... possibly... inherit any money, anything... anything if you're dead?” 

“It’s quite convenient,” she said, slowly, dangerously, “to have a brother who is a lying, cheating, son of a bitch." She stepped away from me, over to Noel. She bent to him, kissed him on the cheek, and combed her fingers through his dark hair. 

He cringed and pulled away. "Stop it, Lia."

Ignoring his protest, she pulled his head to her hip, holding him there like a mother would a petulant child. "So convenient to know of someone so close to you who stole millions of kronor from the family's own business, someone who, once found out, once drawn out of his little financial rat-hole," she pressed in on Noel's face, crushing him against the jut of her hipbone, "someone who was more willing to help me kill, more willing to help me get what I deserved than to go to prison.”

Noel threw her off, stood quickly and crossed into the hallway, out of the living room. “Noel is such a pussy,” she spat, when he'd gone. 

“But…how?”

“Noel was next in line,” Lia explained, talking to me like I was a bloody idiot. “Noel would stand to inherit, and would be oh, so duty bound to pass all of his wealth, all of his riches on to me. But you see," she instructed, "that could only happen if Lova weren't here, if Lova'd been sent to prison….” Lia took the two steps to close in to me, knelt, and gripped my thigh again. 

She leaned in to me, bringing her face close to mine. I flinched away. 

She struck, like a snake, gripping me about the face again. 

"Aah!" Damn her!

She didn’t squeeze, but I met her eye, my lip snarled, teeth bared, daring her to. But instead of applying pressure to my already mangled flesh, she brought her lips to my face. She drew the flat of her tongue languidly up my cheek, over the broken skin and crepitating bones, dragging and flaking off bits of dried blood. She brought her tongue back in her mouth with a little 'mmmm' sound. 

And then she pulled back, caught my glance, and pursed her lips in a wry, horrid grin. “Or, if she were dead.”

The reality of what Lia had planned didn't quite register before. It didn't quite sink in with me in my stupefied half-conscious state. But seeing Lia, there, in front of me, the look on her face of sheer hateful determination... it made that little something, that fight or flight bit of me deep inside my brain snap and tumble over.

"No! Fucking no way! No!"

I pushed back against the chair, the sudden flood of adrenaline in my blood stream blessing me with the ability to all but ignore any pain. 

I brought my left hand up in a swinging arc and cold-cocked her with the loose handcuffs dangling from my wrist. 

She grunted, screamed, and took three clumsy steps backwards, clutching at her face. Blood poured out from between her fingers and she howled with it. 

Serves you right, you whore.

I stood. The chair was still attached to my damaged left leg, but I stood anyway, wobbling a little on the unstable knee. I set my stance, sank my teeth into my bottom lip, and lashed out with my right leg, delivering a hard as I could round kick into the other side of her face. 

She cried out, her head jerking back and to the side. 

I reached out with my left hand to grasp her, to choke her, throttle her, to do whatever damage I could, but she slipped away from me. All I'd managed to grab was a bit of her blood-dampened collar, and she twisted that out of my hand. She backed up, beaming a nasty, red-toothed grin at me. Taunting me; knowing full well how torpid and slow she'd rendered me. 

She had just begun to turn, to run away, when Noel appeared, gripping her from behind. Lia yelped in surprise and growled as she wriggled in the circle of his arms. He wound his arms around her tighter, around her biceps, trapping her, and she howled, a piercing, keening whine that cut through my ear canals, stabbing the gray matter inside my head. 

I took a deep breath, a step, dragged the chair, another step, another drag, and then I steadied myself. I matched her face, sneer for sneer, and then I kicked up again, that time only nicking her under the chin, my stockinged foot cutting a swath into the line of blood dripping down her face. 

"Ha!" Lia barked. "Missed!" Then she turned her attention to Noel. "Get the fuck off me!" She bellowed, twisting herself again. Lia leaned back and pedaled her legs, kicking with her sharp heels against Noel’s legs

"Fuck, Lia!" Noel dropped her. He had no choice. Recovering, Noel shot out a hand to grab Lia's shoulder, but she twisted away. Noel flitted a glance at me, turned tail, and flew after her. 

I wanted nothing but to go after her myself, to chase her down and pummel the shit out of her; but instead, I fell back into the chair, utterly spent and completely exhausted. 

Only from two kicks and a few steps. Pathetic. 

I sat there, panting, my chest heaving, the contents of my stomach, or whatever there was in there, threatening once again to evacuate the unpleasant place of my body.

I heard the rapid fire click of heels and the slide and smack of loafers once again on the marble of the hallway. I heard a series of curses, screams, and scuffles. Fabric tore. Something hard scattered across the floor - Lia's necklace? There was a growl, and a “you fucking bitch!” There was a scrape of metal on stone, a thump and crack of drywall, the breaking of a wooden door…another scream, a crash of porcelain, a whisper, and then...

A distinct, metallic, hollow click. 

Then silence.

"Lia... please. Lia. Lia? LIA!"

Another click, and then...

A gunshot.

"No!" I bellowed. I stood up, a new dose of energy coursing through me. I walked, stepping with my right foot, dragging my still-tied left foot behind me. I cried out, gasping with each step, only able to take a few. 

Only a few, but it was enough. It was enough to get me the rest of the way from the sitting room to the corridor. I braced myself against the divider wall, panting and heaving with the effort of movement. I curled myself around the wall, chancing a look down the hallway.

"Oh, God," I moaned. Noel lay there, spread eagle upon the marble floor, a growing puddle of red blossoming in a stark contrast to the black and grey-veined white.

Unacceptable. Absolutely unacceptable. 

Because if he was dead, it was my fault. I'd lost control over the situation the moment I set foot in my brother's flat. I was responsible, and I knew it. I couldn't have it. 

Unacceptable. Fuck!

I screamed. “Noel!”

I kicked out at the chair, trying desperately to shake it off, all but ignoring the instability and pain screaming at me within my knee. I had to get free. I shook, hard, once, and the silk tie slid from my ankle. I hopped, dragging my useless left leg into the hallway, toward Noel’s still form. “Noel.”

I bent my right knee, flopping down onto the floor, “Aaah!” It hurt, as everything else did when I moved. “Noel, hey, Noel,” I pushed at him with my left hand. He didn’t respond. I touched his throat, placing two fingers on his jugular vein. 

A pulse.

Good. Good.

And then I heard the tap tap tap of heels behind me. 

Not good.

Silence. 

Then a click. The same click. A click I knew all too well. The click of a gun being cocked; of a bullet casing leaving the chamber, and a new projectile being loaded therein. 

God damn it. Fuck. Fuck!

“Nice try, Magnus.”

***

In all truth, I was rapidly becoming tired of this whore leading me around by handfuls of my hair. Made me give serious thought, in a brief moment of insanity, to having it all cut off. All of it. Fuck the blond curls. They could go burn in hell. My vanity wasn’t worth this shit.

Lia’s nails dug into my scalp, and she scratched, leaving trails of stinging tears across my skin. She gripped my hair and tugged, leading me like a horse on its reins to where she wanted me. 

I reached my good hand up and tried grasping at her, to get some grip, some sort of hold on the situation. Some control. Any control; but Lia thwarted me with a pistol butt to the elbow. I yelped, hearing a crack, and that arm, too, went almost immediately limp. Limp and useless. She tugged at me, steering me back into my brother’s living room, and she threw me back down into the chair, my arse landing directly upon my ruined right hand, and I screamed. 

I screamed with the pain. I screamed out of anger, frustration, pure unadulterated fury - the fury that burns so hot inside that it hurts, and fuck all else. I screamed out of terror, of shock. I screamed out of being just so fucking fed up with her shit that I wanted to kill the bitch and tear her eyes out. I had enough. 

I screamed for Noel.

I screamed, hoping, praying, someone would hear me. That someone would help me.

Because in the state I was in I couldn’t help myself.

And it pissed me off.

I screamed until Lia slapped me. Hard. “Sit still.” Lia ordered. “Sit there and shut up.”

I glared at her, curling my lip like a threatened dog. I may have actually growled. “Tell me...you... did it.”

“Did what?”

“Killed Johann."

"I've already told you."

"No. No... you didn't. I want to hear it. I know you’re just going to shoot me like you did Noel. Just tell me.”

She paused, stepping behind me. She set her hand on my shoulder again, just like before, and bent to me. “I did,” she whispered, then straightened, pulling her fingers through my tangled curls, forehead to back. “And I’d do it again.”

“You won’t kill anyone again, Lia.” The voice came from the entryway, a deep, sonorous female voice, and I knew immediately who it was.

“Lova,” Lia sneered, “so good to see you again.”

***

Lova gasped, her voice filled with a mixture of sadness, surprise, and joy. I tipped my head back to see her -- only to be met with the feeling of cold steel at my occiput. Lia held the gun to the back of my head, and I was once again, rendered helpless. 

I'll admit, it frightened me. Scared me shitless. I shook, I fought against the tremours, tensed up my muscles as much as the pain would let me but I still shook. I shook like a frightened puppy and I hated myself for it. 

Lia adjusted the angle of the gun, and pushed the metal harder toward me. The open barrel dug into my scalp and I yelped. 

“Lia, no!” Lova shouted. “Please. Please don’t.”

I kept my head bent low. Had no choice, but I forced my eye upward to see. Just to catch a brief glimpse. It hurt so badly to move my eyes that way, but I did. And what I saw cut me to the core.

Lova stood there, in the entry way; dirty and disheveled and looking distraught. Tears flowed freely down her face. She sniffled, her nose running, but she didn’t dare move to clean herself. 

Both of her hands were occupied.

She was holding a gun. Her own weapon. And it was aimed at Lia. 

“Beg me,” Lia said, pressing the barrel harder. “Beg me to spare him.”

Lova took a step in, readjusting her aim. “Do what you want, I don’t care.”

I gasped, couldn’t help it. My breath hitched in my chest hearing that. 

“He’s got your photo in his wallet, Lova. You can’t tell me you don’t care.”

“I don’t.” There was silence for a moment, then Lova said, quietly, “I care about you, though, Lia. God, Lia, I missed you. I can't tell you how much I missed you.” Her voice shook, sobs rending her words apart.

“Bullshit,” Lia hissed. 

“Not bullshit,” Lova retored. “I… I really thought I’d killed Johann, you know. I couldn’t remember. I wondered if I didn't. It didn't make sense, none of it did. But, then I kept thinking to… to how he’d killed you, and how he got away with it.” She chuckled once, “and I really thought I’d done it. Guess not.”

“Too bad,” Lia whispered. I felt the gun barrel rotate in its place, as Lia stepped around me. “Too bad.”

“But you… you did it.”

“How’s your head, Lova?” Lia sneered. “Hurt still?”

“Yes,” Lova responded. “Hurts a lot now that you mention it.”

“I’m sorry for that,” Lia spat. Pause. “No, I’m not.” She laughed.

“Well, Lia, I am. I'm sorry. I’m sorry for everything. I'm sorry for everything Johann did to you. I'm so sorry. So sorry.” Lova sobbed again, I could hear the wet in her voice. Oh, God, how I wanted to go to her, to comfort her. 

But she’d made it abundantly clear she didn’t give a fuck.

No more, I thought. Enough of this shit. I struggled against Lia, throwing my head back, twisting my neck to try and shake the gun off. I knew it was stupid, but at that point, I didn't care. 

“No, Magnus! Don’t move!” Lova shouted, startled. “Please. Please. Don’t move!”

Ah, so she did care. 

Which was not a good thing for Lia to know. Lia shifted her grip on my gun, her hold on my shoulder tightened in equal proportion. Lia angled the gun upwards, aiming at the top of my head. “No!” Lova shouted. “No, please. Please. Lia, don't. Please.” She sobbed. 

“Did you cry for me like that, big sister? Did you?”

“Yes,” Lova breathed. “I did. I cried long and hard for you. I cried for days. I did everything I could to think of you every day,” Lova’s voice came rapid, in a quick breathy, staccato. “I kept your uniform in my room. I kept your photos at my desk, just... just ask Magnus. I did. I kept that locket you gave me when I was a kid. I’ve got it hanging from my car mirror. I kept that little stuffed puppy you gave me for my sixteenth birthday.” Lova’s voice wavered. “I kept your bayonet. The one from the war. I kept it, just like I promised I would. And I took care of it Really good care.”

“I kept yours, too. Always.” Lia responded. I felt a splat of moisture on my bare shoulder. A teardrop. Lova was getting to her. Good. Very good.

Lova huffed, once. I could almost hear that sad smile I'd seen so many times. “No! You used mine,” she whispered, her voice taking on a tone of regret. “You used mine to kill Uncle Johann.”

“And he deserved it!” Lia screamed. “He deserved to die!”

“No one deserves to die!” Lova matched her intensity. 

“He killed me!” 

“You’re alive! How could he have killed you if you’re alive!”

“Look at me,” Lia moved off of my shoulder and snaked her fingers around my throat, pressing hard into my adams apple. “Look at me, Lova! You know what he did to me. You know.”

“But we tried. You wouldn’t go to the authorites! You wouldn’t report him!”

“What good would it have done me?” The hand tightened around my neck, nails dug into skin. “They,” she jerked me upward, my chin pointing to the ceiling, “they wouldn’t have listened. They would have just blamed me. They would have put me up on the stand again and flayed me alive… again. I couldn’t! They’d never have believed me!”

“So, you killed him.”

“He killed me first!” 

“Why me? Why did you set me up?”

“Your boyfriend here knows, let him explain it to you.”

She twisted and pressed the heel of her hand into my larynx. I coughed and wheezed. I couldn’t breathe. I tried lifting my arms to fight her but I couldn’t move either of them. “Lova!” I choked. “Take the shot!”

“Yes, Lova,” Lia taunted, pressing harder on my windpipe. “Take the shot. End it now.”

“I can’t!” Lova screamed. “I can’t!” 

“Why not?”

“I just found you. I just got you back. I… I can help you!” 

“You can’t help me.”

“Yes I….”

“No one can help me!” Lia screeched. "No one can help me!" 

I coughed again. My lips went numb. My face went numb. I felt my mouth involuntarily open and close, like a fish from water, my lungs burning as they craved the air they were so cruelly deprived of. “Lova!” I managed, croaking, nearly no sound escaping my lips.

“Magnus. Magnus! Lia, let him go! Please!"

"Take the shot!" Lia wailed. "Do it!"

"No! I can’t…I….”

There were footsteps, male footsteps, the sound of leather slapping against the marble floor. 

Followed by the click of a gun. Again. 

Then there was a booming, familiar, and very welcome male voice. 

Kurt Wallander’s voice.

“Lova! Lova, get down!”

And a shot rang out.

And the pressure left my throat.

And I sucked in a massive breath, and coughed, shaking every raw nerve in my body. I filled my lungs, and doubled over, rolling into a ball on the cool, soft floor. I drew breath again, my chest afire with new life.

And then I heard a scream.

“No!” It was Lova. And there were footsteps. Lova’s footsteps, and they were coming toward me. No, they were going behind me, passing me right by. “No, no, no, no, noooooooooooooo!” 

Then there were shouts, orders given, yells. There were hands on me, voices asking me what hurt, if I was okay, moving me, making me lie back on the floor, but all I could hear were the sobs and the cries coming from Lova, and her horrific, broken, keening wail. 

A keening wail that carried one single word with it. Not a word. A name. A name beginning with D. The initial on Lova’s knife. Her sister's knife. Her sister, DS. 

Not Lia. No, her name wasn't Lia. It was...

“Dahlia!”

***


	9. Part Nine

The sound of a zip closing could mean many things to many people. 

To a clothing designer or a tailor it means creativity, success, making a living. To a young mother, it means bundling up a small child against the harsh Swedish winter for a bus ride to school. To a snowboarder, it means bracing up and lacing up against a new mountain to conquer. To a fetishist, it means the start of a beautifully bound friendship. 

To a police officer, it means abject failure.

It means an arrival too late.

It means a lack of protection.

It means someone has died a violent death.

It was the sound which made up great chunks of many a policeman’s nightmares.

Including mine.

I was surprised that I’d even heard it; the long, slow, drawn out zip of the black polyvinyl body bag, the bag that encased Lia Sahlberg’s… No. Dahlia Sahlberg’s…dead body.

Lova had gone silent, a stand-out quiet in the cacophony of police and paramedics and investigators and forensics. She’d howled out that name, that elusive D, the D on the knife; the D for Dahlia -- and then she’d said or cried no more.

I couldn’t see her. I wished I could.

In fact, I couldn’t see much of anything save for the ornate white Rococo ceiling of Ansgar’s flat. The paramedics had braced me, air-casted me, and bandaged me within an inch of my life; and even though I knew they were there to help, I couldn’t avoid the fear and the feeling of being trapped, confined, strapped down against my will once more.

The neck brace itched, it dug into my flesh, it hurt. So did everything else, for that matter, but I was tired of dealing with it, tired of struggling against it. So I went with it. I sucked it up and went with it.

There was a gentle hand on my shoulder. “Magnus?” It was Wallander, standing on my good side. I was only just able to see him if I rolled my eye all the way to the side, which made my head swim. “Magnus, you’re going to be okay.” 

Thankfully, Wallander bent further over me; his face swam into my limited field of vision.

“I….” I coughed and sputtered. “No…N….” Fuck! “Noel?” I barked. 

“He’s alive. They’re taking him out now. Hit to the shoulder, but he’ll be fine.”

I exhaled through my nose. Funny, but I was able to feel the air pass through my nose and my throat, as if every molecule of oxygen and carbon and hydrogen were dancing with knives around my tissues, the nasty little bastards leaving cuts and scrapes and scratches along the walls as they did so. “Lo…Lova?” I swallowed, and that particular movement felt like my muscles contracted against tiny razor blades lodged in my trachea. “Aah!” 

“Don’t try and talk.” Wallander said. “You’ll only make yourself worse.”

“Lia?”

“Yes, she’s dead.” Wallander affirmed. “Shot to the head, died instantly.” I immediately noticed his choice of words. He obviously couldn’t bring himself to say, “I shot her in the head, and I killed her instantly.” 

I knew that feeling. I knew that feeling all to well.

It was as if Kurt was saying to me: “Now we’re even.”

And in my book, we were even.

And fuck…perhaps I had actually become in Wallander’s debt.

Which brought my thoughts back to -- “L…Lo…va.”

“She’s gone, Magnus. She left with the body, just now.”

I blinked and furrowed my brow. Gone. Gone? Gone just like that, without even a glance, an acknowledgement, a touch on my hand, nothing. Part of me couldn’t blame her. In a way, I supposed, Lia’s death was my fault. It could have been. 

Would any of this had ever happened if I’d just let things go? If I’d just let things play out? Maybe she felt that way, too.

No.

No, I was doing my job and I did it fucking well. I did everything right. I’d figured it all out.

It wasn’t my fault. Lia’s death would have happened anyway; if I’d been there or not. She was destined for it. She was on a self-destructive path, and Lova knew it.

Fuck, it was my brother’s flat anyway! What the hell was Lova doing there in the first place? Why the hell did she bring Noel there anyway? 

She stole my fucking key!

No. Lia’s blood was not going to be on my hands. No way. No it wasn’t. 

No. Lova had no reason to hate me. She had no reason to desert me, to leave me here alone.

No. Lova had no reason not to love me. She had no reason to ignore me.

Lova had no…. Fuck no. It wasn’t… it wasn’t my… my… oh, damn, my throat hurt. God! It wasn’t my fa… shit, I couldn’t… oh, God, my chest, oh, shit! It felt like my lungs were being torn apart, rendered asunder with each breath.

“Magnus, don’t get upset, now, they say your throat’s all swollen from the… if you…you’ll…. Magnus? Magnus?” Wallander’s voice took on a strange, breathy, eerie tone. What was it? Worry? “Hej, Magnus? Magnus!”

I quickly realised why Wallander was shouting at me. Why he was panicking. I started to panic myself with the realisation that I was no longer physically able to draw breath, that my airway was rapidly shutting itself off. My face felt wet, wet from tears that streamed from my one good eye, and my whole body had gone numb. Hot. Deprived. Desperate. 

I thrashed a little. Hands gripped my arms and my flailing legs.

“Hold him down!” Someone yelled. “He’s closing up!” 

The pressure and pain increased; and it’s true what they say about suffocating. It feels like an elephant sat firm with all of its massive weight pressing down upon your rib cage. Wallander’s face went ashen, his eyes glossed over, yet I kept my gaze fixed on him – like he was the North Star, a saving point of light in the dark of the wilderness. I held on to Wallander – Wallander, of all people.

“Magnus,” he hissed, sounding almost angry, the bastard. “Come on, come on; don’t do this, Magnus! Don’t you fucking dare!”

Screw you, old man. I’ll do what I want.

There was another voice, from a distant radio, blaring unfamiliar words into the air, words like, “midazolam… succinylcholine… lidocane if needed…,” and a moment later I felt and saw a hand near my face, bearing a great, large needle. My gaze whipped between it and back to Wallander’s scowling face, and I worked my mouth up and down, hollowing my cheeks to suck any air I could.

It burned, my chest fucking burned like a blue gas fire and I wanted it to be over with. 

Just let me fucking die already!

My head felt light, detached, and my eyes felt twenty times larger than I knew they were. 

Then there was another voice, from behind my head. “Please do get out of the way, sir.” A pause. Wallander disappeared from my sight and, fuck me, but my panic increased. I tried to speak his name, but my mouth moved, soundless, impotent of speech.

There was a gentle touch on my shoulder and then upon my face, and that same calm, exotically-accented female voice, one of the medics I’d surmised, said, “Ready for the airway.”  
And another, a stern male voice barked, “Meds up! Meds on board.”

And with a rip of Velcro, the cervical collar was removed.

And that very gentle, gloved hand tipped my head slowly backwards.

Then I saw an upside-down, sympathetic smile, beautiful brown skin, jet black braided hair, and a wink from the lady dressed in green and yellow. I tried smiling back, wondering to myself if she wasn’t really a medic, if she was actually my valkyrie, my angel of death -- but I couldn’t move my lips to welcome her; to welcome her even without Lova’s permission, without her blessing, her goodbye. 

Magnus, you maudlin fucking fool.

I tried keeping my focus on the medic, tried not to think of death, of Lova, of Wallander, of anything or anyone else, but I couldn’t even move my eyes. My vision rapidly blurred, became distant, fuzzy, then darker and darker. “Don’t you worry now there, love, don’t you worry.” She wiped a tear from beside my eye. “You’ll be just fine, you will. Just fine…you’ll just go to sleep, and you’ll wake up just fine… I promise.”

I promise.

She lifted, adjusted something, and lowered her hand to my face. She placed a cold, flat, curved metal blade in my open mouth and pushed down on my tongue, but it no longer felt like my tongue. I didn’t feel any reflex. I didn’t feel any pain. There was no instinct to cough or choke or buck against it. The tip of a plastic tube touched, and slid down the back of my throat. 

“Tube’s in.”

Relief. Air. 

And then sleep.

***

Lova never came to the hospital whilst I was in A&E. She never came whilst I was in recovery after I’d gone to the operating theatre. She never came to my hospital room. 

No voice mails, no texts, no messages, nothing. 

It was the loudest silence I’d ever heard.

Anne-Brit had visited, bless her. 

Upon my release from hospital, she even brought her husband along so that the two of them could drive me home, back to Ystad, Anne-Brit in hers, Henrik in my car. 

Even Wallander stopped in. He brought some film entertainment for me in the form of a DVD of Noel’s hospital bed confession. 

Hooray for Hollywood.

I knew those actor good looks of Noel's wouldn't go to waste. 

“You should see this,” Wallander said, as he slipped the disk into the side of the wall-mounted flat screen. 

The video whirred to life. Wallander sat in the large reclining chair beside my bed, aimed and clicked the remote. The image was grainy, and moved about a bit in the beginning. It made me dizzy to watch with one eye. I closed that eye for a moment until the screen steadied itself.

Noel Sahlberg was sat up in his hospital bed, propped up with an ungodly number of pillows. He looked wan, ashen, and pale; dark circles were painted broad brush with charcoal under his eyes and his hair stood out on end, in severe need of a combing. 

Not unlike Lova’s hair. In fact, a lot like Lova’s hair.

My heart tugged. I’d liked the guy, once. I felt for the man, just a little bit. 

“My name is Noel Johann Sahlberg,” he began, “I am here with my advokat, Wilhelm Johansson, and I am fully aware of my rights and I make this statement of my own free will. If I am called to testify in court, I will say that my sister, Dahlia Sahlberg, approached me upon discovering that I had… I had….”

“Go on, Noel,” a voice said.

Noel swallowed, audibly and visibly and adjusted his seat on the bed. “That I had… stolen… from my company, Sahlberg-Mikkelson AB, and Dahlia threatened to turn me in to the police if I did not help her.”

“What happened on the night Johann Mikkelson died?” Wallander’s voice boomed from the side of the screen.

“Go on,” said the other voice. I’d sussed by then that the other voice was his advokat.

“Lia texted Uncle Johann on a phone she bought in Stockholm, one of those throwaway phones that she knew couldn’t be traced. She texted to make it sound like Lova wanted to see Uncle Johann and make amends or something like that. I told Lova I was in Stockholm when we talked after Johann’s verdict came down that day, but I was really in Ystad. I contacted Uncle Johann. I phoned him and offered to take him out for a celebratory drink, you know. He got the text, just like Lia planned, so we went to Lova’s place. I parked my car in Lova’s drive, and told Johann I’d wait for him.”

“What happened next?” Wallander asked.

“Lia… Lia waited in the bushes, and when Uncle Johann approached Lova’s front step, she came… she… oh, God!”

“It’s okay, Noel, give it a second. Take your time.”

Wallander aimed the remote at the television and fast-forwarded through a period of time when Noel was apparently tearful, trying desperately to get hold of himself. His advocat came into the frame now and again, bracing Noel’s shoulders, whispering in his ear. Wallander hit the play button and the screen came back to normal speed. 

“…knife up into his chest,” Noel croaked, still tearful and sobbing. “She stood right in front of him, looked him right in the eye, grabbed his shoulder and thrust that knife, that fucking knife right up into my Uncle’s chest, and she just let him drop. Then Lova… then Lova pulled up in her drive, and ran out of her car. She saw Johann lying there in her walk-up. Right under the house light. Lova…she screamed her head off. When Lova came, I ducked down, hiding in the bottom of the car, so she didn’t see me, and Lia wore some sort of mask thing over her face. Lia…Lia told me later that she had thrown Lova head first against one of the porch columns and that she knocked Lova out cold. She said she moved Lova’s body around so that it was all… you know… draped over Johann’s, so that it looked…. So that it looked like Lova had killed Johann.”

Noel doubled over, clutching at his shoulder, his face a sudden mask of pain, sorrow, and regret. The nurse came into the frame, scurrying around the bed. “You’ll have to finish now, gentlemen,” she ordered. 

Wallander spoke once again from the video. “What happened then?”

Noel raised his head and peered up in Wallander’s direction. “Lia ran. She ran into my car, and we left. We left. Right as… right as you lot showed up. I drove her to my… to my place and then we headed straight for… for Stockholm. Drove all night. All… oh, God, aah!... all night!”

The advokat chimed in. “Is there anything else you need, Kurt? If not, I think he’s done here.”

“No, thanks Will,” Wallander’s voice replied. “You’ll be hearing from the prosecutor’s office once we get this to him.”

“I’ll need a copy, Kurt. Send it to my office?”

“Absolutely.”

And the video blipped and the screen went blue.

“He confessed to the rest of it later, too. To all of the embezzlement, to luring Lova to your brother’s place, and the rest but… I’m sure you already know what happened there. Anyway,” Wallander slapped the flat of his hand on the bed beside my chest, “he’ll be charged with anything the prosecutor can charge him with, believe me.”

“But… he… he helped me.” I whispered. I still hadn’t regained full use of my voice. Between the strangulation and the intubation my vocal cords were extremely fucked up. 

“Yeah, the prosecutor’ll know that, too. Mitigating circumstances, anything like that helps.”

“He should have… just told… Lia to fuck off… and take the rap… for the money by… itself.” I swallowed, wetting my mouth for more talking, “Now he’s got… accessory to… murder and… and.... “ I swallowed again, speech difficult. Finally, I blurted, “Shit. He was… a stupid… fuck.”

Wallander cocked an eyebrow at me and gave a half grin. “Pot meet kettle.”

I moved my left hand from out of the sling and used it to point to myself. I arched my own eyebrow as if to say, “who, me?”

“Yeah, stupid fuck. You, Magnus,” Wallander’s tone was fatherly, not berating, which was a comforting and rather odd change. “Ever hear of calling for back up?”

I rolled my eyes and shook my head. “O…okay…yes.” I croaked. “You…are right. I… was… stupid.”

“Yeah, stupid. But brave.”

I gave him an incredulous look. “I was… beat to shit… by… by a wo…woman.”

“Okay, beat to shit by a woman who was trained by the Swedish military to kill and was on her own rather nutters, yeah.”

“Still…”

Wallander grinned and bobbed his head. “Yeah, okay, you got your arse kicked by a bird.”

He laughed. I flicked a tissue at him from my sling-bound left hand.

“You won’t hear the end of that from Lova, you know.” Wallander said.

Fuck, why did he have to mention her? I sank my teeth into my lower lip, chewing on the flesh there, pushing and pressing against the sting and fullness behind my eyes, against the bubbling pit of hurt fury deep in my gullet that threatened to spill over at any moment. Last thing I needed was to get angry, last thing I needed with all of the bandages and stitching around my damaged eye was to wet them with stinging salt tears.

“I haven’t…. heard anything from…. Lova.” I whispered.

Wallander stood and tapped his fingers gently upon my pin cushion and fat bandage of a right hand. “Give her time,” he said slowly, deliberately. “Just give her time.” I wiggled my fingers a little and Wallander moved his hand down, curling his carefully around mine. “Give her time.

***

The drive back to Ystad, well, it was torture. 

Well, not as bad as what I'd experienced over the prior week or so, but torture nonetheless.

First, I was tucked up in the back seat of my own car, which of itself was an odd, uncomfortable thing. Second, my wrist was bound in what seemed like three inches of cotton and bandage and other wrapping type shit and I could barely keep it comfortable in my lap. My other arm was freed from its sling, thank God. It was only a dislocation, and since I’d dislocated it hundreds of times as a kid, those tendons were already stretched out and crazy, so it was nothing new. 

I still couldn’t see out of my left eye, but at least the bandage was thinner, and only encircled my head once around, set on a jaunty angle, holding a hard shell plastic eye patch in place. 

I felt like a pirate. 

Arrrrrr, me hearties.

Third, I was subjected to Henrik’s horrible singing to the 1980’s satellite music radio station nearly the whole way. 

Torture. Believe me, it was torture. Especially when he sang, “Take On Me” at full lung capacity.

I, blessedly (and after a few painkillers) fell asleep in the car somewhere between “Sunglasses at Night” and “Maria Magdalena,” and we arrived back at my flat shortly after that. Anne-Brit and Henrik helped me up the stairs, got me cleaned up, and saw me to bed.

“I’ll be back in a bit to check on you,” Anne-Brit said, motherly. “I have to go home and relieve my father. He’s been with the kids for three days, and besides,” she tucked the covers around my chest, “I miss them terribly.”

“Thank you, Anne, so much,” I whispered; the combination of the pain medication and the comfort of my own bed taking me quickly to sleep. 

I barely felt the kiss she placed upon my forehead. “You’re welcome, you bloody idiot. Just don’t do that shit again.”

***

I’d expected to wake to an empty bed, as usual. As usual, I had no expectations that Lova would be beside me, especially of late. Part of me, during this whole fucking ordeal, had hoped, really, really hoped she’d come; in spite of my anger, in spite of my pathetic, self-piteous feelings of abandonment and loss and lonelieness. 

I still wished that she would come and just simply, lay beside me; and when I got that wish, I turned into an ogre, an arse, and I nearly ruined everything. That morning, when I opened my eyes to the pink and yellow Ystad morning light streaming into my bedroom window, Lova was there.

She was there, lying naked in my bed, her head held up by her hand, elbow on the pillow, her curves standing out with stark contrast beneath the green sheets. She looked like a punky mermaid, or a woodland fairy, with her spiky hair standing out in all directions and her creamy skin glowing in the sunlight.

I blinked and shook my head a little, wondering for a moment whether I was yet again in one of my bizarre lucid dream states. I wouldn’t have been surprised if I was. However, I knew that was very improbable. The pain medication I’d been taking all but stopped my dreaming; and I’d missed it, to tell you the truth.

But no, this was no dream. She was no dream.

“Lova?”

“Yeah, Magnus,” she whispered.

“What are you doing here?” I heard myself ask. My voice sounded angry, spiteful. I didn’t know why, but it did. I couldn’t help myself. “Why are you here?” I turned my gaze from her and stared up at the ceiling. My guts churned, tormented, split between utter elation at seeing her there, then, and complete hatred stemming from her previous abandonment.

“To see you,” she said, quietly.

“Bullshit,” I spat. “Why are you here?”

“I missed you.”

“Liar. No you didn’t.” 

“I’m not lying to you, Magnus,” she brought her hand out from beneath the covers and lay her fingers upon my right arm. 

I drew it away violently, hissing with pain as I hit my hand against my hipbone. “Fuck!” 

“Magnus.” 

I turned my back to her, like a peevish child. “No, Lova. Not anymore. I’ve had enough.”

There was a gentle touch at my back, the pads of her fingers pressing in, working their way down my spine. I shifted against it, and then sighed with it. “I waited for you,” she breathed. “I never went to Uppsala like I told Noel.”

“Good for you, now just leave, like you always do.”

She pounded her fist on the mattress. “Damn you, Magnus, listen to me!”

I flopped back on to my back and glared at her. “No, Lova. Just leave. Just fucking leave, I don’t want you here…”

She stared back at me. Her eyes were uncharacteristically soft, pleading. 

“I don’t want you here,” I repeated, quieter, with far less intensity than I’d wanted.

Because I didn’t mean a word I said.

And Lova knew it.

Lova moved her body closer to mine, snaking over beside me. She bent over me, god damn her, and pressed her lips to mine, humming sensually against me. Her fingers traced little circles over my bare chest. “Please,” I whined, “please don’t do that.”

“Why not?” She quirked a half-grin and an eyebrow to match. 

“I couldn’t take it if you did that, if you did that and left me again, so just don’t.”

“Who says I ever left you?”

“Are you kidding me?” I moved away, fuck the pain. I swung my legs out of the bed and pushed up with my left arm, sending a bolt of agony through the still-unstable joint. “Damn!”

“Magnus, come back to bed.”

“No!” I limped away toward the window. 

“I saw your car, at your brother’s place,” she whispered.

“So.”

“I left Noel there. Saw some woman… I didn’t recognize her at first… come in, then you went up; and I half expected to either see you come out or to see Noel come running his arse out with his tail between his legs, you know? You all angry and shit that someone else was in your brother’s flat. I half expected like a Benny Hill show you know? You chasing my idiot brother round Ostermalm….” She laughed. 

I didn’t laugh. I lowered myself into my armchair, wincing as my body hit the cushion. 

“So I sat there. I parked my arse on the other side of your car, downed a coffee and a cheese pastry, and I watched the window. And I watched the door, and you didn’t come out. And Noel didn’t come out. And that woman didn’t come out. So I watched some more, and then I heard you scream.”

“Yeah, and you came right up to my rescue, didn’t you, you big fucking hero!” 

“Not the first time I heard you,” Lova said, calmly, ignoring my moment of pique. “I phoned Wallander. Talked to Anne-Brit, actually, and she passed the information on to Wallander, but fuck all if they’d come arrest me, I knew you were in the shit, and I didn’t want to go in alone. I couldn’t call the Stockholm PD because of the warrant for my arrest, but I knew I could trust Wallander.”

I laughed. “Trust Wallander? That old fart wanted to hand you over to the prosecutors quicker than you could say ABBA.”

“I’m sure he did in the beginning, but he listened to me after I told him about Dahlia, and after Anne-Brit confirmed that with her own research.”

“So… you knew,” I whispered.

“Only then. Up until that point I still thought I’d done it.”

“That must have been hard for you, thinking that of yourself.” 

“It was.” She rose from the bed, the sheets wrapped around her body. She stepped toward me and perched herself on the arm of the chair. “It was hard, but you never thought I did, did you?”

“I didn’t know,” I said.

“Yes you did, you never doubted me for a second.”

“That’s wrong,” I turned my head to her and arched an eyebrow. “I did doubt you. I doubted you a lot, and I hated myself for how much I doubted you, but god damn me if I wasn’t going to prove myself wrong.”

Lova tipped her body toward me, placed her hand upon my chest, and bent to kiss me again. “Magnus,” she cooed, her lips inches from mine, her breath warm and sweet on my skin. “Magnus, please.”

I turned my head away, inhaling a shaky breath through my nose. I puffed up my cheeks and blew it out, sinking my teeth into my lower lip. 

I didn’t look back as she stood and stepped away. 

She walked out of my bedroom, carrying the sheet with her. 

I still stared out the window.

I didn’t want her to leave. I wanted her there. I needed her there. Who was I kidding? I didn’t want her to leave. I didn’t want her to leave. 

Please, please, I thought, don’t leave.

My eyes burned again, threatening to burst forth with liquid salt…the fuckers. I despised that, I despised the way I felt for this woman. I despised the hold she had over me. I despised that I loved her so much that it hurt, physically hurt, when she was gone. I despised the fact that she could reduce me to a state of tears, made me the selfish bastard I’d become, that she could hold my heart in her tiny hands and squash it whenever she liked, and I’d just come back for more. I despised that the very thought of her naked in my bed made me hard as a rock. 

I turned my left hand over and pressed my palm over my cock. 

Damn it!

And yet. And yet, I loved her.

A few minutes later she came back, fully dressed, her jacket on and her rucksack slung around her shoulder. She took my left hand in hers, flipped it over, and slapped the key to my brother’s flat atop my palm. “Your brother’s key.”

I sat up. “Fuck the key!” I threw it as hard as I could with my damaged left arm. I’d intended to whip it against the wall, but all I did was toss it in a graceful arc, the bit of metal landing with a ‘ping’ against the glass of my wardrobe. “Damn it!” I screamed, and the effort of it tore my still-raw throat. “Damn you, Lova!” 

“Fuck you, Magnus!”

“No…” I pointed my finger at her. “Fuck you. I nearly died!”

“I know that! But you’re fine now, aren’t you? Aren’t you?”

“Seriously, screw you, Lova! You never… you were never there for me. You weren’t there when I was being fucking tortured by your killing machine of a sister, you weren’t there for me in hospital, and you’re not really here now are you? All you want is a fuck, just like always. Well, I’m sorry,” I said, waving my bandaged hand in the air, “I’m not exactly in the mood right now.”

She went silent. Deathly silent. Her eyes got wide and tearful, and her lips turned up in a sneer. Her voice was pitched low, deep, dangerous. “I was there, Magnus. Maybe not when you were awake, because you were asleep half the time, but I was there. I came to the hospital. I was there after your operation. Just ask Wallander. I was there, I was there so, how dare you… how dare you say….”

“How dare I? How dare I? How… d…dare you.” I stumbled over my words, my conviction fading. No, change that. My conviction utterly faded.

Because I knew, in a way, I knew she was right.

“You’re a shit, Magnus, you know that?” She paced the room, hands behind her back. She kept her tone low, even, speaking very matter-of-factly. “Over the last fuck knows how many days, because I’ve forgotten even what day it is, I’ve done the following, and nothing, nothing you claim to have gone through could even come close. I’ll tell you that right now.” 

She began speaking faster, pacing faster, gesturing wildly as she recounted and vented her entire spleen to me. Deservedly so. “So. Okay,” she intoned, “I’ve buried my uncle who I once loved like a father and learned that he was nothing but a fucking pervert. I’ve buried my little sister, my little sister who I loved with everything I had – and not only did I find out she was an utter psychopath, but she murdered in cold blood and nearly killed you, if you remember. And oh! Hey, I got to bury her a second time -- and it was not pleasant going through it again,” she added. “Then, then! Then, Magnus. Then I had to stand there at the hospital and watch as the Stockholm police fucking handcuffed my brother to a wheelchair, wheeled him outside, unlocked him, and then locked him right back up in a squad car. I had to stand there and watch as the idiot – oh the fucking idiot! – as he confessed to everything in front of Wallander and….”

“I know, I saw it.”

“Good for you. Glad you could enjoy my family’s shit.”

“I never said I enjoyed it.” I said, quietly. 

“Well, good. So now you know, Magnus, now you know why I couldn’t be there for you in all your bloody fucking suffering.” Her voice was rife with bitter sarcasm, and it cut me to the core to hear it. “It’s all about you, isn’t it?” She sucked in a breath, swallowing it, swallowing down any other words. 

Silence.

Realisation. Realisation struck me like a bullet train.

She hadn’t been there for me, because she couldn’t be.

Just like I wasn’t there for her, wasn’t there when she suffered through her own pain; a different kind of pain, maybe even a worse kind of pain, a pain that would probably never, ever ease up. I wasn’t there for her because I couldn’t be.

“I’m sorry. I’m an arse,” I mumbled, fidgeting with a loose thread on my elastic bandage. I twisted my finger around the thread and snapped it off. 

“Yes, you are.” She sauntered back to my chair, bent, and tented her arms over me, her hands braced, gripping the soft, plush arms.

I kept my head low, still fidgeting, but raised my eye to her, contrite, frowning. “I’m a class-A jerk, aren’t I?”

“You got that right,” Lova moved closer, ever closer; her eyes flicking this way and that over my face. “You’re a complete jag.” She pressed her lips to the tip of my nose. “You’re an arsehole,” another one, “utterly selfish,” kiss, “headstrong,” kiss on the good cheek, “possessive,” kiss over the eye patch, “pig-headed,” kiss on the forehead, and “perpetually fucking stupid.”

“Yeah?” I exhaled and swallowed, hard. I parted my lips for her, lowering my gaze to her own pink flesh. “Am I… am I all those things?”

“Yes,” she hissed. “All those things and so… so much more.” She pressed her lips to mine, moving in liquid waves against me. I drank her in, thirsty as I'd ever been, my ardour for her only starting to be quenched. I was so thankful for her. For her kiss, for her forgiveness. For everything she was.

She brought her hand up against my bare chest, and she opened to me, letting me in. She pulled back, grinned, and drew her fingertips down my face. “And I love you for it.”

I blinked. “You… you….”

“I love you, and I’m sorry too, you idiot." She grinned. "Now take me to bed.”

And so, I did.

Or at least I tried. 

I tried my best.

***


	10. Part Ten

It wasn’t the first time I’d made love with Lova Sahlberg. And I knew for damn well sure it wouldn’t be the last.

***

“This tribunal finds the accused, Noel Johann Sahlberg, guilty of all charges brought by the Public Prosecutor. As for the charge of the attempted murder concerning one Herr Magnus Martinsson, said charge is reduced to that of aggravated battery, due to evidence of mitigating circumstances thereto. Herr Sahlberg is hereby remanded into the custody of Prison and Probation Services until sentencing. This is the finding of this court.”

I’d watched Lova carefully throughout the hearing, throughout the three-day-long proceedings against Lova’s only remaining living relative, her brother, Noel. 

This wasn’t the first time I’d been in this courtroom, with her, watching someone she felt deeply for put on trial. Last time, she’d been angry, stoic, full of ire, sounding in fire and fury. 

This time, she sat quietly, her hand in mine, silently weeping.

I was surprised by that. I’d never seen Lova cry out of sadness. Not once. She’d tear up now and then out of fear or hatred or even righteous anger toward me, over something I did or didn’t do, or said or didn’t say, but never like that. Never quietly.

Not even when Lia died, either the first time or the second time, did she mourn like that.

I squeezed her hand as hard as I could, given the state of my healing. The doctors had, blessedly and thankfully, removed the pins and let me go bare-armed, without the itchy god forsaken bandages. Lova was glad of it too. 

You know, not having to bear listening to my whining and bitching and moaning each time she saw me through a dressing change was quite a relief for her, as well. But my arm and hand were still weak, still atrophied to all hell, and they still hurt.

But at that moment, my pain and discomfort was of no matter. 

It was my connection to Lova, or rather, her connection to me that mattered. 

And I was only thankful to be able to there for her to connect with. Weakened limb and all.

“Noel’s going to jail,” she’d said, even before the hearing started, “I’ll be left with no one else.”

“Now you know, that’s not true,” I’d replied, bending and placing a kiss on her spiky-haired head. “You’ve got me.” I squeezed her shoulder. “Frankly, Lova, you know what? I had no one myself until I had you. It was kind of pathetic, really. I had my job, yeah, maybe Anne-Brit and Henrik as friends, but it wasn’t the same. Or, you know, maybe Kurt when he decided not to be such an arse; but Lova, why do you think I held on to you so fiercely?”

“I never did understand that, I guess. I never really got why you stayed with me, why you kept coming back when I kept pushing you away,” she set her head against my chest. “Now I do.”

“Now you do,” I repeated.

***

When the hearing ended, the Public Prosecutor, a bloke named Svensson, gave us the opportunity to talk with Noel before he was taken to the holding area for sentencing. 

As with most accused, Noel was given the right to wear his own clothes at trial.

Noel had chosen a very smart blue Armani suit, complete with waistcoat and bright red tie. He looked like the proud, wealthy CEO that he once was; like he was heading for a board meeting or a presentation to the company.

He didn’t look like a convicted criminal; like the confessed thief, accessory to murder, conspirator, and attempted murderer, well, aggravated batterer, which he was.

Lova and I approached the accused’s holding area. Lova took two steps in front of me, and I gave her hand just that little bit more of pressure as she released mine. 

She looked so small to me, so fragile standing there. Her hair was combed neatly to the side, she’d done her make up sensibly, and she wore her black linen suit neatly, tidy, and clean. She looked the part of the lost, mourning sister.

And my heart ached for her.

“Hej, Lovette,” Noel’s grin, plastered upon his face, never truly reached his tired, red, shadowed eyes. The rich sparkle had all but disappeared. “Give us a hug, yeah?” He held out his arms to his older sister.

Lova hesitated, her steps short, shuffling. I watched, keeping my distance, as she practically fell into his arms. “Noel, you stupid shit,” she sniffled. 

“I’m so sorry,” Noel buried his face the crook of Lova’s neck, his own broad torso heaving, shaking, as he matched Lova sob for sob, tear for tear. “I never meant to, Lova… I never meant….”

“I know,” Lova lifted her head and brought a hand to Noel’s bright red, damp face, patting him gently. “Lia, she could be very… convincing.”

Noel lifted an eyebrow and huffed air through his nose. “I suppose. I was just… I was just so….”

“Stop it.” Lova said, firmly, motherly. “Stop it now, it’s all over, and I forgive you. Even Magnus forgives you, you know that. Shit, I forgave you weeks ago, you arse. Now shut the fuck up and take your punishment like a big boy, okay, little brother?”

Noel sniffed, and wiped his nose on the cuff of his very expensive Armani suit. 

Obviously, he knew he wasn’t going to be wearing it for a long, long time, and he no longer gave a shit about snotting up the impeccably tailored sleeves. He inhaled and blew that air out with a puff of his cheeks. “Okay. Okay.” He nodded, curling his lower lip beneath his upper one in a sad, wan, mockery of a smile; feigning reassurances that he just couldn’t give. “I’ll be good. I promise.” 

Noel drew Lova back into his embrace, and his eyes met mine over her head. He pushed Lova back, once again regarding her at an arm’s length. Noel grinned and tucked Lova back under his arm, embracing her around her shoulders. He quirked a half smile and looked back up at me. 

“Magnus,” he nodded, curtly.

“Noel,” I replied.

“Thank you,” he said, rearranging his maudlin features into an expression of manly pride, an expression I knew all too well, and frankly, saw right through. “Thanks for testifying on my behalf. Thanks for telling them… telling the court what really happened in there, how I… how I helped you.”

I shrugged. “I couldn’t lie, could I? I mean, hell. I was under oath.”

“True, very true,” Noel rolled his eyes and bobbled his head a little. “But you spun things rather nicely in my favour, and I appreciate that.”

“Didn’t change much in the long run, did it?”

“No, but it was enough.” Noel extended his right hand to me. “It was enough.” He covered my hand, very gently, with his other one, and gave me a small squeeze. “Take care of her, of Lova, will you, while I’m gone?” 

His eyes shone with new unshed tears. 

“You know I will,” I, in my turn, covered his hand with mine. “Don’t worry about a thing.”

“I won’t. I don’t.” He let go and chucked me once in the shoulder. “Hej, Magnus. How about when I get out, you and me… how about we go have a beer or two, or three or four, again?”

I chucked him back. “Absolutely, man. It’s a deal.”

Noel sucked noisily on his bottom lip, raising his eyes to the ceiling. “Well,” he cringed, “by the time I get out, we’d better make it tea and cake in the park over a game of chess with all the other pensioners.” He laughed, a sad, breathy mirthless chuckle. 

I smiled. “Whatever it is, you say where and when, and I’ll be there.”

The uniformed court officer approached. “Come with me now, Herr Sahlberg.” The officer grasped Noel around the bicep and drew him away. 

“Lova,” Noel whispered, leaned in, and planted a soft kiss on Lova’s cheek. “I’ll see you soon. I love you.”

“I’ll see you soon, Noel. I love you, too, little brother.”

And Lova’s tears flowed, unchecked and unfettered, against the wool of my jacket. I let her cry, just holding her; and by the time she’d finished, the courtroom was vacant, empty, her sobs echoing throughout the stark, mahogany wood and whitewashed chamber. 

And when she’d cried her last, she tipped her face to mine, pressed her lips against my throat and said:

“Take me home.”

***

Lova had all but shut down again on the drive home from the court car park to her place. It wasn’t her usual mental switch-off, though. It was different. Not like usual where she would become robotic, turn into an automaton without feeling or emotion, devoid of and denying herself of her own humanity lest her feelings get the best of her. 

This was different; it was almost… almost a quiet resignation. Like a long, drawn out mental sigh.

As if she’d stopped fighting.

As if she’d resigned herself to the way things were and that she was growing to accept things.

Or even maybe, as if she’d won.

And I knew this, I knew her state of being in my beat up Volvo as I turned onto her street, I knew this because she wasn’t sitting there with her hands in wringing her lap, or gripping her jacket or grasping the dashboard.

Instead, she was holding my hand. 

She was holding my hand, tracing little patterns on my skin with the ball of her thumb. So I knew, even though she stared out the window, even though in every other way she was detached, distant, brought deep inside herself; at that one point, where her hand met mine, she was connected.

I pulled into her drive, and threw the car in park. 

And so, I’d come round, opened her door, and extended my hand to her. I’d taken her, guiding her with an arm around her shoulder, my body close beside her, up the walk where her Uncle Johann had died. 

Lova sobbed a little, only once, walking past that spot, and I embraced her all the tighter. 

She remained silent as I guided her into her bedroom, where I left her to change her clothes while I went into the kitchen to make tea. 

On my way out, I grabbed a t-shirt and a pair of jeans that I’d kept in an old rucksack in her bathroom closet. While the tea steeped, I changed, kicked off my shoes, and made myself comfortable.

And I wondered when Lova would clean out a drawer for me like I did for her at my place.

Although, interestingly enough, when I was in the washroom, I noticed a second, still-wrapped and unused toothbrush in the jar, and I smiled. 

I smiled because I knew it was for me.

I collected the tea things and met Lova in her sitting room. I lowered myself to the couch, slowly still, mind you, beside her. I still had trouble with my right hand, so Lova took the tray from me (which I’d actually balanced on the side of my hand. I couldn’t grasp it yet… awkward to say the least), gave me a mock exasperated look, and set the tray on the table. 

She handed me a cup.

She never picked her’s up.

Instead, she caught my eye, and stared. Her eyes had gone, once again, that onyx over peridot over marble.

But there was a sparkle there. 

I knew that look. That sparkle. That brightness. Oh, God did I know that look.

I set the tea mug back down.

“Do you want to talk about it?” I asked, swallowing, knowing the answer full well. “We can talk about it if you like.”

Lova remained silent for a beat, and then another, and then another. The absolute intensity of her stare raised the little hairs on my arm. Her tongue snaked out and wet her lips. I sighed. She moved in toward me, her eyes finally releasing their hold upon mine. 

Her gaze fell slowly, slowly down, ever so slightly, roving over my face, from the small lump that remained beside my left eye, to my nose, all the way down to my lax, slack, open mouth. 

She moved in further; her hand, warm still from the teacup, pushed upwards against the flesh of my thigh, kneading the muscle there. Her breasts in the thin black t-shirt brushed against my still-useless hand. 

Well, not so useless for this.

Her smirking lips closed in upon mine, feathering lightly, oh so very lightly. She whispered against me, her breath tasting of the mint of her toothpaste; the sound of her voice echoing within the open cave of my mouth.

“Magnus, please. I need you.”

***

It wasn’t “take me to bed, Magnus,” or “fuck me, Magnus,” or “take me, Magnus,” it was “I need you.” 

I need you, she’d said. My heart danced. Skipped a beat. Because I supposed that, with all the crap, with all the drama, with all the tragedy; here I was, this daft, overly ambitious, vain, arsehole of a man, and she needed me. Me. 

And fuck all if I needed her. I did. I needed her badly.

I pushed off the sofa, stood, and held out a hand to Lova. She set her fingers delicately in my left hand and curled them around mine, gripping as she stood into my embrace. I encircled her in my arms and cradled her to my own body. She let her head fall upon my collarbone and I sighed with the comforting weight of it. As did she, she sighed into me, and it was all that mattered.

I knew that afternoon, there in Lova’s house, with the weather outside overcast and gray and threatening to rain, and the world outside always threatening to come in and destroy what little happiness we’d built together, I knew that we’d be gentle with each other. She didn’t want me rough. She didn’t want to forget. I knew, for once, that we, Lova and I, wouldn’t be just fucking. 

I knew we would be making love.

That afternoon, I was her lover. Her man. I was as real and as human to her as anyone could get, and she was the same to me. She needed me for me, and that time, not just for my cock. 

And I was more than happy to oblige.

I brushed my fingers through the bristle-brush of her short, thick hair, watching in awe as the little strands perked up under my touch. I let my gaze fall from there to her parted lips as she worked the backs of her fingers over my face, gracing back into the curls at my occiput, compelling me forward. 

Lova melded her mouth to mine, breathing into me, moving gracefully and in soft sine and cosine waves, searching for the perfect answer to our strange equation. 

We opened to each other, our tongues exploring each other in new ways, charting out new territories of ardour and adoration.

I parted from her. “Bedroom. Now.” 

She took my hand and led me there, gracefully grasping the doorknob and sweeping it open. Once inside, she dug her fingers into the waistband of my jeans and pulled me, guiding me like a dog on a leash. 

Woof.

She plucked at the hem of my t-shirt and, in response, I raised my arms above my head. Lova stripped me of the thin fabric, careful around my right hand, and she tossed the ball of snowy white aside. I did the same for her, taking the old, torn, black Dead Kennedys t-shirt from her body, discovering and uncovering her soft, scarred and tattooed skin and her even softer breasts beneath it.

“Jesus Christ,” I whispered. “So fucking beautiful.”

“Speak for yourself, pretty boy.” 

Lova curled her fingers around the back of my neck, toying with the curls at my hairline, I wrapped my arms about her waist again and lowered her, backwards onto the bed so that she lay atop me. 

“Still trouble with being on top? Your hand?” 

“Yeah,” I replied, embarrassed. But then… I liked having her on top, so I didn’t mind it so much.

“Then let me.” Lova shimmied down so that she knelt on the floor in front of my dangling lower legs. She crept her fingers up my thighs, tickling me. I laughed a little and she grinned. Her fingers continued upward, little boop boop noises coming from her wide mouth with every finger-step. 

“Cut that out.” I laughed harder, and continued laughing until she’d had my jeans undone, the fly down, and had her hand inside my jeans, stroking the fabric of my boxer shorts -- atop my oh, so, hardened flesh. 

No more laughter. She had my full attention. All of my attention.

“Lova,” I warned.

She ignored me.

“Oh, Fuck… Lova, you’re not going to….”

“I am.”

“Oh, God. You don’t have… to….”

“I want to.” Lova hooked her fingers in and pulled, evacuating both my jeans and my boxers with one fell swoop. She cupped me, turning her hand this way and that over my swollen, blood-laden flesh. 

“This is… oh…you…you’re… you need… not me… oh, fucking God!” I threw my head back when she leaned forward and exhaled a cool breath over my heated skin. “Lova!”

“What?” She responded, pointedly. I felt that word, her hums vibrating against me, sending chills up and back down my spinal column. “Oh, come on. Can’t I have a little fun?”

“Fun… yeah… okay….fun…” I panted. “Hah. Ah. Fun.”

And fun she had.

“Gah! Jesus! Jesus! Oh my fffffffff! Aaaaaaaah!” 

She took me all the way inside of her mouth, the moist warmth awakening absolutely every nerve in my body, drowning out the unpleasant sensations, numbing any residual pains or aches, making me forget anything but that sweet, sweet, mouth on me. 

I sat up and curled myself around her, gathering fistfuls of her hair in my left hand, working my fingers, stropping them against her scalp. 

Her hand joined her mouth, encircling me, and she moved. Oh, she moved. She moved in sanguine waves over me, applying her tongue in just that right bit and that right amount of pressure to drive me mad at the same time she was calming my nerves. 

“Lova, stop,” I tucked my fingers under her chin, ceasing her movement. “Lova, I’m… you’d better… ah… you’d better stop.”

Lova let go, and I hissed as the cool air flowed over my skin. 

But she remedied that, quickly.

“Magnus,” she cooed. She straddled her legs over mine, and in one swift movement, settled herself over me, enveloping me once again in her warmth and softness and comfort and love. 

I gripped her, one-handed, around the waist and her body undulated, working in the same pattern as her mouth, and I groaned, deep, my mouth connected to hers. So connected that I felt the vibrations of my own voice resonate throughout her body. 

It was always a challenge to do left-handed, but I brought my thumb down between our bodies and pressed against that tiny bundle of nerves at the front of her sex; that centre of uniquely female pleasure, and she moaned with it. My still-useless right hand fell limp to the side. 

She brought her own hands up to her breasts, kneading her flesh, pinching the nipples there, and the very sight of it drove me on, drove me harder, made my hips pump seemingly on their own volition.

Faster. Harder. Firmer. Muscles tighter.

“Ahh… ahh,” she whined, her voice punctuating every lift of my pelvis against her, into her. 

I pushed my thumb harder, she pinched her reddened flesh again, and I pressed my flesh completely and deeply into her. She threw her head back and cried out, a long, keening wail not of despair, not of sadness, but of sheer, utter ecstasy; and the very sound of it, the very thought of it, made my own release unwind, spring, and snap like an overstretched elastic band. 

“Lova!” I screamed, pulling my hand from between our bodies and gripping her firmly by the waist, pushing her down upon me. I pushed myself up into her, letting all of my worries and cares and woes and hurt and hate and despair flow out of my body; and I took on hers in exchange. I growled and she grunted, her inner flesh heating, drenching, working over mine in waves and vibrations like nothing felt anywhere else. 

Lova inhaled, sharply, through her nose. “Magnus, oh, God, Magnus,” she breathed, and collapsed down over me, still joined to me, her legs bent at the knee and curled around my waist. She turned her head, tasting the skin of my face and neck and hairline with little pecks as she huffed and puffed, her breath slowing, slowing, slowing, until she let it all out with a deep sigh against my neck. 

“Oh, God, Lova. I love you.”

“I…I love you, too, but you know that.”

“I do, and I’m sorry, but I doubted it once. I doubted that you ever wanted me. I don’t want to ever doubt it again.”

“Don’t.”

***

I woke to an empty bed the next morning. But I’d expected it. Lova rose early, got herself ready for her shift at work and left, but not before rousing me into a dazed wakefulness and kissing me soundly on the lips. 

“Enjoy your day off, you lazy son of a bitch,” she’d said, giggling. 

She reached beneath the duvet, pinched my arse, and skipped away before I could catch her. 

“Skank,” I joked.

“Prick,” she shot back, poking her head back into the room. “I’ll see you at half four.”

I gave her a small wave. 

“I expect you’ll have dinner ready when I get home, my little love slave.”

“Yeah, whatever,” I waved a hand, “I’ll get…” I yawned, “I’ll get take away and put it in your cooking dishes just to make you think I made dinner.”

“You do that,” she sang, and then she was gone.

I hadn’t fallen back to sleep right away. I lay in bed, hands tucked behind my head over the pillow, and I drew my thoughts back to the night before.

Lova and I had discussed… things. Things like, our future together, like our jobs, like money.

“I’d forgotten,” I had said, “you’re pretty wealthy now, aren’t you?”

She shrugged, “I hadn’t thought of it, to be honest.”

“Bullshit,” I spat. “Come on, don’t lie to me.” I twirled a bit of her hair around my finger, and brought that same finger down over her cheek. “You’ve thought of it.”

She rolled her eyes. “Yeah, I have.” She bit her bottom lip and turned her head to me, half her face buried in the pillow. “The solicitors transferred a big chunk of it to my account last week.”

“You’re kidding.” I leaned up on my elbow. “How much?”

Lova gave me a playful swat. “None of your fucking business, you nosy parker.”

I laughed. “Okay, okay,” I grinned. “But will you still want to be with a poor, broke, Ystad cop when you’re rolling in the kronor?”

“Of course, I would.” Lova’s countenance took on an impish glow. She pushed her tongue out between her teeth, her lips smiling around it, and her eyes went wide. “And I made sure of it.”

“Oh my God,” I whispered, “what did you do?”

“I bought out the rest of your letting contract.” Her words tumbled out rapid-fire behind her cupped hand. 

“You did what?”

“You move out this week-end.”

“I do what?”

She let out an exasperated exhale, rolling her eyes at me like I was a stupid schoolboy. She pointed at me. “You,” she wiggled her fingers, miming a person walking, “moooooove,” she hitched her thumb behind her back, “out… of your flat this weekend. They’ve already relet it.”

“What?” My jaw dropped. I furrowed my brow, thoroughly confused. “Where am I supposed to go, then?”

“You’re moving in with me.” She made an open-handed gesture, palms to the sky, then pointed to herself. 

“I am, huh? And what if I say no?”

She tweaked my nose, “then it’s the doghouse in the back garden for you, Martinsson.”

And with that, she got out of bed, padded into her bathroom, headed for the shower.

“Well, fuck me.” I said, shocked.

“Okay, yes, I will, but later!” Lova bellowed.

***

Once I did manage do doze off again, it wasn’t for long. 

My iPhone buzzed on Lova’s… well, now my bedside table; the familiar ringtone I’d assigned to Kurt Wallander chiming out into the room.

“Hallo, Martinsson,” I answered.

“Magnus, get dressed, get down here.”

“It’s my day off, Kurt,” I protested.

“Yes, I know, but I need you here now.”

“Where are you?”

“I’ll text you the address. Lova and Anne-Brit are here with me now, Nyberg’s on his way,” Kurt rambled.

“What… what’s happened?” I pushed my hand through my hair, gripping the back and giving a slight tug.

“It’s the prison transport. We got a call this morning, a report that someone had found it parked on the side of the road, and that it hadn’t moved for some time.”

“So what?”

“So, Magnus,” Kurt snapped, impatiently. “The driver’s in critical condition, and both of the guards are dead, that’s what!”

“The fuck!” I sat on the edge of the bed and yanked my jeans on. I ran over to the side of the room where I’d kicked off my shoes. “Was the transport carrying anyone?”

“Yes, Magnus, of course it was carrying someone! Prisoners! It was carrying prisoners. One prisoner in particular, and he's fucking disappeared!”

“Who?” I pulled my shirt over my head, and stopped short, one sleeve half-on when Kurt gave his answer.

“Noel Sahlberg.”

***


	11. Untitled - One Shot (Post Black Dahlia)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> An additional "chapter," post Black Dahlia.

Untitled

“No, Magnus, God damn it, I will not calm down!”

“Lova,” I hissed, grasping at her upper arm. “He’s gone, everyone’s gone, just let it go.”

She yanked away, turning, arm poised for a fierce backfist against my face. 

I flinched.

“Jesus Christ, Magnus,” she let her arm drop, inhaling loudly and letting the breath out with a stern puff of air. “I… I can’t just… I can’t let that go. I can’t.”

“Wallander’s an arsehole sometimes, I know,” I approached her, cautiously, standing in front of her. She let me take a step, then another, and my hands rose to rub her tense shoulders. “But just give it some time, maybe… maybe he’s right.”

“No!” She threw my hands off of her, grimaced, and balled her fists at her side. “No, Wallander’s completely wrong. Nothing he says adds up, I’ve got this case all sewn up and now he has to go and screw with everything I’ve done?” She pointed a finger in my face. “Unacceptable.”

“It’s not a matter of being right or wrong,” I tried placating her, “it’s a matter of leaving no stone unturned, you know that. He thinks of things. He’s not trying to undermine you, and he’s not trying to tell you you fucked up, he just wants to make sure you’ve thought of everything.”

“I have!” Lova shouted, her voice echoing around the empty station house. “Don’t tell me you’re taking his side of this, or I’ll fucking punch your face in.”

“What if I am taking Wallander’s side, Lova,” I said, calmly, “regardless, I’d like to see you try to hit me.”

Lova’s brow furrowed and she frowned, bearing teeth. Her whole body tensed and yes, she threw a punch at me.

I caught the punch, deftly, her fist smacking painfully into my hand, but I didn’t flinch. My significantly larger hand curled effortlessly around her tiny one, and gripped her, tight. The tips of my fingers reached down beneath her wrist, and, winking and grinning, I bent her hand back.

“Magnus, ouch! Let go!” 

I twisted her gently at first, but then she struggled, and I applied more pressure. “Settle down,” I ordered. “Settle down … calm yourself, and I’ll let go.”

Lova struggled again. “No. Let me go, you arse!”

I bent her hand over itself, twisting it in, so that she had no choice but to step toward me. I released her hand and quickly snatched at her waist, pounding her hips into mine. “Settle down,” I repeated, overenunciating every syllable. 

She gazed up at me, then, and immediately read my expression. The hunger, desire, wantonness I knew was writ large upon my features. I could feel the lust there, and I saw that reflected in her face as well. “Fuck you,” she spat. 

I shrugged and quirked a smile, with an eyebrow to match. “Okay.” I grasped a handful of her hair and pulled, back and down, forcing her face upwards. I took her mouth with mine. 

She fought me, at first, biting my bottom lip and scratching her blunt nails over the exposed skin at my neck, but I pressed harder against her lower back, forcing her body further into mine, grinding her against me.

Lova hummed against my lips, an angry, sour tone, but the vibrations were sweet, reverberating here and there within my cheeks and throat, accompanied by the tympanic pounding of her fists against my chest. 

I pulled back, huffing for air. “Think this through, and think this through well,” I growled, “I’m going to take you, I'm going to take control, there’s no question about that, none at all,” I whirled her around, her back to my front, and I fisted one hand around her breast, the other cupping her sex below. “I just want you to tell me where. It's your only choice in this matter.”

“I don’t…. I don’t want you,” she derided through grit teeth. “I’m angry with you. I hate you right now. What makes you think you can have me?”

I pushed my fingers against the denim between her legs. “This makes me think I can have you, this… right… here.” I pressed again, my fingertips experiencing the warm, dewy evidence of her ardour through her jeans. “Tell me where. Now.” 

Lova threw her head back, her laughter pitched low and sultry. She turned her face into the bend between my neck and shoulders, and sank her teeth into the flesh there. I yelped, and I hissed with the pain, but I didn’t let go. 

“Wallander’s desk,” she dared. “Take me on Wallander’s desk.”

“Are you sure about that? Have you thought this problem completely through? Is there anything you’ve missed?” I whispered, teasing, letting my breath tickle the inside of her ear. I bit down upon the lobe there, and she cried out.

“Now!” She reached an arm behind her and took a great handful of my hair. She pulled, hard, downward and twisted herself out of the circle of my arms. Lova switched the position of her hand, wrenching my follicles painfully, but at the same time her other hand palmed my cock, matching the pressure and pain above with pressure and pleasure below. 

“Ah….oh… Lova,” I hissed, “let go!” My hand flew up to my head and I pried her fingers from my curls. I brought her hand down to the level of my face and shoved two of her fingers into my mouth, biting down hard upon the skin just below the second knuckle. 

“Fuck!” Lova screamed, and her hand once again flew to my crotch where she curled her fingers around my balls, hard, squeezing me uncomfortably, yet pleasantly. 

“Do that again,” I said, taking her shoulders, shaking violently, and pushing her, backwards, toward Wallander’s office. “Do that again, and I’ll shove three fingers up your pussy so hard my fingernails will scratch out your eyeballs.”

“Ooh,” Lova taunted, “I’d love that.” 

Her arse met with the edge of Wallander’s desk and she yowled with the pain of it. “Up,” I ordered, lifting her legs, and setting her upon the edge. 

Lova turned around and threw papers, pens, a tea cup, a box of tissues, and the phone haphazardly to the floor. She lay back upon her elbows and scooted so that her entire upper body rest upon the old, faded, and peeling wood of the ancient desk. “So, you said you’re going to take me. Come and get me.”

“But you said you hated me,” I teased, my hands working deftly, unbuttoning, working her zip, pulling the offending fabric of her jeans and panties away from her inviting flesh. I bent to my knees and drew her legs over my shoulders. I pushed forward, burying my self between her thighs. “You said,” I caressed her with the broad flat of my tongue, from bottom to top, “you said you didn’t want me.”

“I don’t want you, I don’t give a shit about you,” she writhed, sitting up and snaking her fingers through my hair, “I just want you to get me off, right here, right now.”

“That’s not true,” I laughed, living up to my prior threat of practically fisting her. I emphasized the word, “not,” with a shove of three fingers up into her body, curling the middle one in, applying pressure upon that small, ridged area inside. “Say it’s not true.”

“Oh, God…ah… ha… no.” Lova squirmed, letting her elbows flop out to the side, her back smacking upon the desk, her head hitting the computer keyboard with a loud rattle. “Just… oh, Jesus… just get me off, it’s all I want.”

I grinned. “Bullshit,” and I bent to my task again, shaping my tongue like a blade and flicking the muscle against her sex, point and counterpoint with what my fingers were doing below. I dipped my tongue occasionally lower, tasting her as her flesh heated, rising significantly in temperature, and as it grew engorged with her blood. I worked her, hard, pumping deep within her, unrelenting in the stimulation of her nerve centre, no matter how much she whined or begged or pled. 

“Magnus!” She tightened her grip on my hair, but I paid her no mind. I felt a surge of heat and backed off my ministrations, eliciting an infuriated growl from above. “You fucker,” she hissed, “don’t you dare stop.”

I eyed her, grinning wickedly, and started in again, this time with my mouth below and fingers above, and she moaned, a keening wail that bounced off of the paneled walls and echoed against the glass partitions. I kept her on the edge, speeding up, feeling the surge of heat and the start of a pulse, and then backing off again. 

“Damn you,” she cursed again, kicking and digging her heels into my shoulder blades. “Fucking finish me or I’ll kill you,” she threatened. 

“Then I’ll die a happy man,” I retorted. I straightened myself up, took my flesh in my hand and without any warning, buried myself to the hilt within Lova’s body. “Oh, God!” I cried. Lova's body, so close to her own release, boiled with heat and steamy moisture and was so incredibly tight that I nearly went blind with the pleasure. 

I bent my body over Lova’s and wrapped my hands around her wrists, binding her in place just in front of Wallander’s ancient computer screen. I stayed still for a long, agonizing moment, watching with a strange joy as Lova growled and snarled at me, snapping her teeth at my nose, trying desperately to get just that little extra bit of sensation to put her over the edge.

I moved, horribly slowly inside of her, and she whined. “Magnusssssss,” she hissed. 

“What?” I whispered, “tell me what you want.”

“I…” I thrust hard, once, and her breath hitched, “I… want to….” I thrust again, harder. “Ah, shit! I just want to… to… oh, God, I just want to get off… get… off… now.”

“No. Wrong answer.” I brought my hand between our bodies and worked my thumb against her clitoris. “That’s not what you want. Tell me what… you… ungh… want.”

The desk creaked under our combined weight, and moved, centimetre by centimetre back and forth as my thighs thrust against the wood top. I kept Lova’s hands bound by the fingers of my hand and she fought against me. “Finish me," she groaned, "I want you to finish me.”

“Wrong again!” I took her, two-handed, around the waist and held her firm, pounding myself into her, striking bone upon bone, feeling the reverberations of it through skin and muscle. “Tell me what you want,” I demanded.

I sped up, myself completely out of control. I felt that familiar spring curl up and wind up inside my groin. It grew, exponentially as I moved, as I wound myself up, as I moved the hands of the clock forward, making the seconds tick on faster and faster and faster until time itself ripped apart, sending my entire body through some sort of strange rift of sensation, leaving me gasping, breathless, my own screams echoing through the empty rooms. 

At the same moment, I felt Lova’s flesh react around me. There was a warm, flooding moisture and a distinct, deliciously full sensation, a tightening of flesh and muscle and a pulse, and three words released upon a howl of pleasure such that it made my heart sing and my satiated cock twitch, “I… want… you!”

I smiled, a beatific, pleasant, happy smile and brought myself up on my hands, elbows locked at Lova’s side. “I always want you,” I whispered, gently. “Always.”

Lova stared at me for a good long while, her breaths heaving, then settling, slowing, easing up, quieting, until she let out a deep, satisfied sigh. She matched my smile and brought a hand up, caressing the side of my face. “I don’t really hate you, you know.”

I laughed. “I know.” I brushed a hand over her spiky hair, feeling it pop back into place as I moved. “Feel better now?”

“Yeah,” she sat up. “Except I think I got stuck on a few paper clips.” Lova turned so her back faced me.

“You did.” I picked three paper clips off of her skin, bent and kissed the little indentations they made. “You think Wallander’ll notice?”

“What, that we fucked on his desk?” Lova shrugged, “I don’t give a shit.”

“No, that you’re willing to listen to him.”

“I am?” Lova cocked her head questioningly.

“Yes, you are.” I quirked an eyebrow, “or do I have to settle you down again?”

“Hm,” Lova rolled her eyes to the side, and tapped the edge of her lips with her index finger. “Maybe I’m close to being ready to listen to Wallander…,” she bit her bottom lip, grinning a Cheshire at me, “but not quite yet. Maybe I need to be calmed down a little… bit… more.”


	12. Restrant - One Shot - NC17

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings for language, sexual situations, including um, mild bondage, possible interpretation of dub-con, and *cough* male internal stimulation if you catch my drift OMFG I can’t believe I wrote this. This is a healing fic post Black Dahlia, Lova helping Magnus exorcise his demons, so to speak. Please read it that way.

Restraint

Scrape. Ting. Click. Click.

 

I woke to Lova’s deep, breathy chuckle pulsing and tickling in my ear. 

“Rise and shine, you sexy sleepy head.” 

Rousing further, I felt the weight of her body against mine, against my side, her leg thrown over my middle, her cold, hard foot dangling, popping back and forth against my knee. 

I groaned, stretching my arms further upward. Lova had always made fun of my tendency to sleep with my arms thrown up over my head, my hands dangling from the edge of the bed, situated between the black wrought-iron bars of the headboard. “You’ll just lose the feeling in your hands that way, you great idiot,” she’d say. 

Although, ever since I’d suffered injuries at the hands of her sister, Lia, including a broken wrist and two broken bones in my hand, I’d actually preferred to lose the sensation there, especially in my right one.

At least that way the throbbing of it wouldn’t keep me up at night.

Although there were myriad various and sundry other things to keep me awake at night lately, since then. 

The nightmares, for one. 

But I digress.

So, as I said, I stretched, wriggling myself just a bit beneath Lova, and she traced her fingers, gently, ever so tickle soft down my arm. I laughed, low and lazy, and moved to embrace her, to wrap my arms about her and pull her closer to me.

But I couldn’t move my hands.

"What the...?" I tugged, once. Twice, three times, and was rewarded with the distinct, thick ‘ping’ sound of steel upon forged iron. I tugged again. “Um. Lova?” 

She rose up on her haunches and straddled my hips. Her little pink tongue poked out between her white, white teeth and she tilted her head, appraising me, as if I were some sort of hot, steaming breakfast dish for her to feast upon. As beautiful as she was sitting upon me, naked, looking all lean and hungry and full of lust, my body and my psyche, unfortunately, did not respond in kind.

I responded, yes, but not in a good way.

My heart thumped in my chest, but not in a good way.

My breath hitched, but yes... not in a good way. 

I found it suddenly very hard to breathe, and I felt as if I were suffocating once again, as if my throat were closing up on me like it had done before, when I had been choked, throttled; and I had the image in my head again of the Asian medic and the tongue blade and the paralysing medication in the big fat needle and the breathing tube and and and….

“Lova,” I repeated, swallowing hard against the thickness in my throat; my voice a breathy whisper. “Lova, you… you have to… you have to get these off me.” I tugged at them again, and my heart fluttered. I felt it skip a beat and I felt as if I were in the midst of a heart attack. “Please,” I begged.

"Are you sure?” she replied.

“Lova… I can’t do this. Not yet. I'm. I’m sorry. I can’t….”

You see, as I started to tell you before, I’d nearly died not long ago. I’d nearly died at the hands of one Lia Sahlberg, sister to the woman who was now working her way down my body, and whose caresses and kisses I simply was not feeling because my entire body had gone numb. Lia had, amongst other things, bound me with my own handcuffs to a chair and beat the living shit out of me; and since then, I’d been absolutely loath to let Lova bind me this way; or to allow myself to treat her similarly.

This in itself was a sad, sad thing; in that we’d both enjoyed this sort of play immensely.

And I mean immensely.

I knew what Lova was doing, don’t get me wrong. We’d spoken of it. We'd agreed to it. 

I needed help. 

I needed healing; and the only way we both knew we could regain the things we loved and regain some Magnus and Lova normalcy in our lives (as normal as that was) was to simply dive in and do it. 

To get rid of Lia Sahlberg once and for all.

We’d talked it through, even came up with one of those safe word thingys Lova saw in one of those god awful erotic novels. Ours was “byggnad,” because, you know, who ever talks about buildings whilst in the throes of sexual ecstasy? 

Yet, I knew it would be frightening for me. Deep down, I even knew that I could very well have a full on panic attack when she finally decided to take me this way again. 

And I did. Have a panic attack. I was having one right then and there.

Maybe I wasn’t as ready as I’d thought.

Which was very, very disappointing. Yet, I knew it had to be done. I had to keep going, push forward. Believe me, the safe word was in my head but nowhere near my lips.

I knew Lova could bring me through it. I knew she could. I trusted her. With my life I trusted her. 

I wanted this. I needed this. 

I needed to heal. 

I needed to break in order to heal. 

For her. For me. For us. 

“Shhhhh, Magnus,” Lova hovered over me. I tugged again at the restraints, hard, hard enough to cause pain. “Magnus, stop. Stop, you’re going to hurt yourself.”

“It… already… hurts,” I hissed. “Hurts.” And it did, I wasn’t lying. My right hand felt on fire and the pins and needles were like dancing flames licking my skin. 

"Do you want me to take them off? I will if you want me to. Say yes if you want them off, no if you want them to stay on."

I puffed out a breath, shook my head, and said: "No. Leave them on."

“Then relax,” Lova’s fingers worked through my hair, inadvertently tugging upon a tangled curl. 

This didn’t help things, seeing that as part of her torture of me, Lia Sahlberg had not once, not twice, but three times yanked the shit out of my hair. 

“Lova, stop!” I screamed, my voice echoing off the white walls of our bedroom, “let go of my hair!” 

"I'm sorry." She pulled back, thankfully, and she instead caressed my face with her gentle fingertips. “Magnus,” she repeated my name, and then said it again, “Magnus. Magnus, look at me.”

I complied as best I could, with the dwindling amount of control I had over my body as a whole. The panic was getting the best of me, damn it, and even my eyes wouldn’t cooperate. I finally, finally, was able to fix her stare and by simply looking at her, simply peering into those eyes of hers and I calmed, just that little bit, just that tiny amount of control regained that I no longer felt as if my death were imminent.

“You’re fine, Magnus,” she whispered, yet her voice was firm, authoritative, “you’re going to be fine. It’s me, only me, and no one else. You trust me.”

It wasn’t a question, it was a statement. “You trust… me,” she repeated, “and you’re going to be fine. Let me take care of you,” she pressed her lips against mine.

My first instinct was to buck her off, to bite, to growl, to push her away. But I knew that was the panic talking. My breaths still came heavy and painful, but Lova just kept herself there, her lips to my lips, and let me take my time in responding. 

Perhaps it was the intimacy of breathing out my fear into her mouth, of her breathing into mine, like letting one’s lungfuls empty into a paper sack as a restorative. Perhaps it was her warmth upon me, the rumpled morning scent of her that my brain had just allowed me to register, but I relaxed, just that little bit more, and my respiration regulated just that little bit more, just enough to allow me to open to her, to move my lips against hers, to taste fresh mint toothpaste and Lova, and I sighed, deeply, into her.

“Better, that’s better; much better,” she intoned against me, like a mantra, “all better.”

But my heart still went like the engine of my beat up Volvo beneath the car bonnet of my ribs. “Not…not better. Chest hurts,” I whispered into her mouth. I pulled my hands again, clinking the chain against the iron, and sending another shock of pain through my arms. “Ah, fuck!” 

Lova bent to my chest, ghosting her breath over my bare skin, the little currents of air she created bending and shifting the small patch of hair I had there. She moved lower, her mouth, teeth, and tongue working in an intricate unknown rune of a pattern on me, until she hovered over my centre. 

“Magnus, trust me,” she said again, and took my still-flaccid flesh into her hand. “Come on, let me have this. Let me help you.” She bent to me, and I felt her words through the thin skin into my core. “Magnus, give it up to me,” she said, and the hiss of air at the end of my name came with the feeling of heat and moisture and she’d engulfed me, even though my flesh was still soft, into herself, and I felt myself hardening rapidly within her. She moaned, and the vibrations helped the process along. 

I felt, rather than saw, her smile around me. She closed back off and there was this sweet, sweet suction and the feeling of her flat, thick tongue working up and down against the underside. “Lova,” I moaned, burying my head into the crook of my still-bound arm, and then I remembered the cuffs and I pulled at them again, and they clinked and I cried out. “Oh, God.” 

And then Lova moved her hand along my inner thigh, joining with her mouth to cup and squeeze me there at the apex, just beneath, and I bucked into her hand and tried, desperately, to keep myself from canting my hips roughly into her mouth. “Ahhh. Fuck!”

And the fierce tattoo of my heart slowed, just that tiny bit, just that little bit to grant me some respite, some further relief, some ability to concentrate on the parts of me that needed concentrating upon and I let out a long, keening groan at the sensation of the back of her throat against my tip. Over and over and over again she took me, deep, and once again, the panic abated just that much more.

Yet, my legs and arms and even my face were still incredibly numb. Pins and needles, tingles, and an unpleasant sensation of floating, a desire to disconnect with the reality of the situation, to remove myself from the memory of being abused and violated and being utterly unable to help or defend myself.

Yet, and yet…I twisted and writhed beneath Lova’s ministrations, feeling that tension, that sweet sweet tension coil up inside me, working its way outward from the centre of my body, filling me up, making me wring my fingers in their bounds, bend my knees and pound my feet upon the mattress. 

I was literally and figuratively fit to burst. “Ah, Lova. You want to stop. You’d better stop if you… oh God, but don’t stop. I don’t want you to stop, ever, but…you… I'm going to...ah!”

She got the message, releasing me with a final draw of her lips and tongue, and a final gentle breath further below. “Better, much better, much, much better,” she said again.

“Better,” I agreed, wholeheartedly and vehemently, “yes, better, now maybe you should... let me go. Take these off.”

Lova grinned that wicked, evil grin. “Are you sure? I still have to make you all better. You’re still pale and sweating, my love,” she observed. 

“Lova, please.”

She became serious. “Is that what you want? Say yes if you want me to take them off." 

Take them off? No. It wasn't what I wanted, it wasn't. Not if I wanted to exorcise these fucking demons and move on. Move on. Get Lia out of our lives for good. 

My animal brain wanted to be let go. 

My rational mind knew I had to continue.

"No. Leave them on," I replied, firmly as I could. "Leave... leave them on."

She moved off me then, stepping off the bed. She padded around to her side, opening up a drawer. 

“What are you doing?” I asked, the fear and loathing and panic starting to bubble up again. She held some sort of tube of something in her hand. “What… what is that... that stuff?”

“Relax, Magnus. It’s for you. It’ll make this more comfortable for you.”

“Make what? Make what more comfortable?” Panicpanicpanic. “What are you going to…”

“Shhh. Trust me. Lay your head back down. Close your eyes.”

“I can’t! I can’t close my eyes!” My heart went again, and that creeping tension started in on my chest, pressing down like a ten tonne elephant, constricting the muscles there, restricting my breathing. I gasped.

“Trust me.”

“Trust you. Trust you.” Mantra. "Trust you."

“Trust me.” 

She bent my legs up, working her hands over my shins to gentle me, like a young girl would a spooked, beloved horse. “Yes, trust me,” she repeated, and once she had me where she wanted me, she bent forward, her hands rubbing, gliding over my shins. She took me into her mouth a second time and I hissed with the contact upon my already sensitive skin. 

With her warm, softness surrounding me I wasn’t completely aware of what else she was doing, until I felt it.

It was like a jolt of electricity through my body so quick and so fierce and so incredibly delicious that I involuntarily bucked my hips -- almost completely off the bed. I heard Lova’s muffled “mmfph, owwww fk!” as I’m sure I hit the back of her throat without her being prepared for it. 

She choked slightly, coughing to the side. “You have to stay still,” she commanded. “Don’t do that again, or I stop.”

“I couldn’t ah… help it….”

“Well, now you know and yes, you bloody can. Don’t do it again.”

She resumed her position, bringing me within her and sucking hard, and there was that sensation again, originating from the area right at the bottom of my body, beneath where she was working me with her lips and tongue. I cried out, and she smiled around me, letting me go, and I hissed with the sensation of cool air upon my cock. “Lova!”

And then I knew what she was doing. My focus shifted downward and inward to where her index finger felt tight inside me. It was strange and new and very very bizarre to be penetrated that way, but she twisted and curled her finger and there was that electric charge yet again. “What is that what is that what is that oh shit what is that?” I droned, babbling rapid fire, “what is that?”

“It’s your prostate, love.” 

I should have known that. Dumb arse. Literally.

“Oh God, Lova, do that again,” I implored her. “Now, do it again, do it again.”

“Be specific, Magnus, what do you want me to do?”

“Do it again,” I wriggled on the bed, desperate for physical contact of any kind. I was so close, so very very close. She brought me there, to the brink, and she held me, the entirety of my being in that very moment within her hand, pumping me slowly, languidly, just enough to keep me on that teetering edge, but not allowing me to fall over the cliff. 

“Do what again?”

“Ah, Jesus Christ, Lova!” My legs moved over the sheets, my feet pushing and pulling practically of their own accord in a strange point-counterpoint to what Lova was doing with my flesh in her tight, heated fist. 

“No. Tell me.” She squeezed, and I bucked. “None of that, stop that nonsense. Now tell me.”

I tugged, once, hard on the handcuffs to show her my intense, deep displeasure. 

Seeing her startle -- catching sight of that little jolt of fright in her muscles and hands - now that... That was empowering. Her eyes went wide and she shuddered at the sight of me. Empowering. Yes. 

I growled, fuming, breathing huffing breaths through my flared nostrils. I bared my teeth, growled a second time, and lifted my head, fixing her with the hardest, angriest stare I could possibly muster. “I want you,” I began, breath, groan, growl, “I want… I… want…ah, fuck!” I threw my head back, pounding myself hard upon the mattress, and lifted back up again.

“Yes, I’m listening,” squeeze, pull, squeeze, push, and this pattern kept on and on and on and oh… oh I could almost smell the electricity coming off my body, like the sharp scent of ozone on a day you know damn well it’s going to rain buckets and the lightning and thunder is going to come in fierce, swift and severe.

“Fine! Lova! Ah, damn it! I want you to put your beautiful, red, thin, strong lips upon my cock and let me fuck your mouth; and I want you to push your finger inside me like you just did, go ahead and do it, yes… yes… and press, hard. Push very… ah! Very, very, very, very hard right in that… oh, God… right in that spot where you did before and I want you to make me explode. Detonate me. Make me blow up into a million trillion scattered pieces. Do. It. Again.” 

I said the final three words through a tight jaw, taught neck muscles and grit teeth; punctuated by intense flexion of my biceps and triceps and loud bangs of metal against metal, handcuffs against headboard, and I growled, low, deep and fierce. “Now!”

“Yes, I think I will,” Lova smiled, but not wickedly. She didn’t give me that burning, hot, evil grin she usually did. Instead, her smile was genuine, loving, almost… happy. “Anything you say.”

And once again, she bent to her oh, so dirty, oh so carnal, oh, so brilliant work, and in no time there was that pulse over my outside, and that delicate yet firm pressure inside and the time bomb went tick tick tick tick and the thin, metallic clock noise in my ears became louder and louder and louder and stronger and stronger and faster and faster until Lova pushed one more time, deeper, with the whole pad of her finger inside me and the bomb went off and I did erupt, my body bursting forth, careening off the bed in an unparalleled paroxysm of pleasure and pain such that I’d never felt in my entire life.

I’d all but forgotten about the handcuffs until I heard them again and realised that it was the steel banging against iron that had made the tick tick noise and I settled in, settled down, lowering myself slowly, slowly, languidly to the bed, sighing, over and over and over, sighing. 

Lova pulled her finger gently out from inside me, and gave a final swipe of her broad, flat tongue against the underside of my cock and I sighed.  
“Better?”

I inhaled, a long, drawn out breath through my nose and exhaled, blowing the air out through my mouth. I repeated the process, my eyes fluttering shut and the corners of my mouth turning upwards into a beatific smile, as if I’d been carried upon light and swift angel’s wings from one of the Circles of Hell and was delivered into the lap and loving arms of my holy God in Heaven. “Better,” I confirmed, taking another breath. “Better.”

“You okay with the cuffs, then?” She indicated my hands with her eyes and chin. “Can we, like, use them again?”

“I don’t know, I think so. I mean, it was ok. Really.” I said, “maybe we’ll just have to try it again sometime.”

“Really?” Lova lay beside me, her length against mine. She reached up above my head and freed me from the hard metal rings. 

“Ah,” I hissed, pulling my hands back down. I removed the second cuff. I wrung my fingers together, circling my wrists, working the blood and life back into the flesh and still-aching bones there.

“You’d let me do that again, like we used to, you know… good cop, bad cop, that sort of thing, we can do that again?” Lova laughed. “Are you serious?”

“I think so,” I laughed with her. “I don’t know if you should ever wake me up like that again, but sure. I guess if I’m prepared for it, and… yeah. I think it’ll be okay. But there’s something I need first. Something I need to do.”

Lova leaned up and pressed her warm, soft lips to my cheek. “Anything.”

I dangled the cuffs in front of her face. “Your turn.”

***


End file.
